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More leadership, please

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More leadership, please

We should set the agenda and describe the vision rather than letting others shape it

Chair of Pharmacy Voice Claire Ward explains what good leadership entails, and why pharmacy needs plenty of it

I was listening to a debate about the problem with politics and leadership recently. Although driven by the debate around the election of the new Labour Party leader, the focus of the debate was why the public had so little connection with many of the politicians of today.

In essence, commentators were suggesting that the politicians of this generation have forgotten to some extent that they are meant to be leaders. So rather than providing leadership – setting out a vision that is at least a step beyond where most people currently look – they have resorted to simply being spokespeople for the public but perhaps with a broader view on many issues.

We often hear politicians, of all parties, referring back to the need to understand public opinion rather than helping to shape it. One commentator suggested that what the public really wants are politicians who are like them – live similar lives, understand the issues that affect day-to-day reality – but provide a greater level of wisdom on how to solve the problems. Representative democracy has changed and perhaps our politicians have taken the view that they are more ‘delegates’ than representatives.

The real leaders

Real leaders – whether in politics, business or the military – have the skills to offer a view of how to navigate to a better place. They stay two steps ahead of those they lead, but are able to relate everything they do to showing that this is the right path to take. They have foresight, wisdom and good judgement, from which they gain the respect of those they lead.

Real leaders have the courage to tell those they lead that sometimes the journey will be tough and painful in order to get to that better place. Real leaders don’t pretend that life will always be filled with good times. Real leaders inspire and create hope that the destination ahead will be better, even if the road to get there is rocky.

It leads me to think about the similarities in community pharmacy. We have lots of ‘leadership’ and ‘representative’ bodies. The relationship between the leaders and those they represent is normally a financial one. A membership, levy or subscription fee of some kind creates the bond between leaders and those who are led, sometimes with voting rights thrown in for added value.

Community pharmacy certainly needs real leadership now. We need to be able to set out that vision of what community pharmacy can and should be in the future. We need to recognise that the role community pharmacy has played for the past 50 years will not, and should not, be the same role in the future.

Time to set the agenda

Instead of simply arguing for mostly what we have now, we should set the agenda and describe the vision rather than letting others shape it. There will always be a role for supplying medicine, but it may not always look the way it does now. A successful pharmacy business cannot be defined by the success of medicines margins, and ‘care’ can no longer be measured by prescription volume. Pharmacists have always advised, but as medicines become increasingly complex that support component should be greater if the NHS is to continue to see pharmacy as providing a ‘value add’ to what many unfortunately see simply as a logistical challenge.

For community pharmacy to be an integral part of primary care, pharmacists need to recognise that what they do will be different in five years’ time. Increasingly elderly patients with multiple morbidities will depend on a skilled professional team, so the work will have to be more clinical. There are pharmacists who are already in that vanguard but they remain the minority. We need more of them.

Leadership is needed at different levels. We need local pharmacy leaders to show others how they can change the way they work and what community pharmacy can be. Those community pharmacy teams in areas due to get devolved powers have huge potential to shape how pharmacy might look and feel in the future.

Recently one trade sector journalist asked whether we had too many representative bodies. The question should perhaps not be ‘how many’, but whether they fulfil a clear purpose. Do they represent the best interests of community pharmacy?

That is the role I believe Pharmacy Voice has set out to achieve and one it must develop over coming months and years. Sometimes we may need to tell community pharmacy, ultimately the members we represent, that their best interests are served by embracing greater change. That will be tough, but it will be the right thing to do

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