Pharmacists must safeguard their professionalism as a range of pressures bear down on them and on the services they provide in a constantly changing environment, the chairman of the RPS Scottish Pharmacy Board is due to tell a conference today.

Dr John McAnaw will tell the annual Pharmacy Management Forum in Dunblane that it is only through pharmacists' professionalism and commitment that people in Scotland continue to benefit from their unique contribution to patient care. 

"Scotland’s pharmacists have a pivotal role to play in the drive for a stronger and more integrated approach to patient care at a local level, and the delivery of Realistic Medicine. But there is also an acknowledgement that they will need the right support and working environment to fulfil their professional duties in times of change."

There is a need for the public as well as health and social care professionals to gain an increased understanding of pharmacists' role as qualified professionals, Dr McAnaw will say. “A pharmacist’s training, expertise and specialist knowledge can improve patient care. Working with other health and social care colleagues, pharmacists will ensure people get the right medicine, at the right dose and at the right time to achieve the best response from treatment."

Dr McAnaw will call for increasing recognition of the role pharmacists can play in Scotland’s health service, managing increasingly complex medicines issues on a day-to-day basis. "To fully utilise the full breadth of their skills as medicines experts, they need to be able to practice as an integrated part of the healthcare team with the right support being made available to them."

The central role of pharmacy in improving clinical decision making to try to ensure that the care people receive is of the greatest value to them as individuals will be acknowledged at today’s event by Scotland’s chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood.

“Pharmacists have a huge role to play as improvers and innovators in, for instance, reducing the burden, waste and potential harm of polypharmacy," she will say. "They are often the first professional a patient turns to in the community and, through initiatives like the Minor Ailment Service, not only offer an alternative to a GP visit, but also can spot the signs when something may be more serious."