Future vision for pharmacy and pharmacy regulation

 

Responding to ‘Now or Never: shaping pharmacy for the future’, the report of the independent Commission into Future Models of Care delivered through Pharmacy, Duncan Rudkin, the Chief Executive of the General Pharmaceutical Council, said:

 

“This report identifies the opportunities for pharmacy to take on an even greater role in caring for patients, as well as the significant challenges facing pharmacy to achieve this.

 

“As the pharmacy regulator, we want to play our part in enabling innovation and promoting improvement so that a greater role for pharmacy in supporting the health and well-being of patients can be realised.

 

“We have just finalised a new strategic plan for 2014-2017, which was laid before the UK and Scottish Parliaments last week. This sets out our vision for the future of pharmacy regulation, with a regulatory framework that puts patients at its heart and is flexible enough to work well as pharmacy continues to change.”

 

The Commission’s report highlights a need to ‘de-mystify’ pharmacy so that patients, the public and the rest of the health service understand the extent of the role that pharmacists do and can have in providing direct care.

 

Duncan continued, “We see a key part of our role as providing essential underpinning for public confidence in pharmacy as it takes on an increasingly wide and diverse clinical and public health role.

 

“As our new strategic plan says, this will require a completely new form of interaction between the pharmacy regulator and the public who use pharmacy services. We are committed to working with patients and other users of pharmacy services, and with pharmacy professionals and their leaders and representatives, to build together a vision for patient-centred professionalism in pharmacy.  We look forward to working with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and all other key individuals and groups to achieve this.

 

 “An example of how we are promoting a culture of patient-centred professionalism in pharmacy is our standards for registered pharmacies. These emphasise the responsibility of pharmacy owners and superintendents to create a culture within their pharmacies which supports and enables pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to behave and practise as professionals. This is critical to the safety and wellbeing of patients.

 

And from this week, there is a new approach to inspecting pharmacies so we can check that those standards are being consistently achieved and that pharmacy services are being delivered in a way that best serves the needs of patients.”

 

The GPhC’s strategic plan for 2014-2017 is available here.