Could the Royal Pharmaceutical Society be re-fashioned to deliver “strong, effective and well-respected professional leadership” once again, wonders Terry Maguire…

Our four esteemed chief pharmaceutical officers (CPOs) wrote an open letter to all pharmacists in June announcing remarkable news, the creation of the UK Commission on Pharmacy Professional Leadership.

The CPOs are, it seems, seeking to push community pharmacy forward towards a bright new future, but they have realised they cannot do it alone and need professional leadership support.

They are, perhaps, suggesting that they need the endorsement of a big-wig commission to deliver recommendations which have been decided in advance by the very same CPOs (although I’m not quite sure on this, given the impenetrable civil servant speak of their missive). It doesn’t take too long working around the Civil Service to understand how these things work, however.

I will, of course, be taking part in the Commission’s “inclusive UK-wide conversation”. Who can oppose “leadership being strengthened to support practising professionals”, and who can argue with anything that will “enable excellence in patient care”?

The CPOs’ letter states that “professional leadership has never been so important”, which I would argue is just a lazy comment as leadership for any professional grouping has always been important. Perhaps, for some past CPOs, there were times when they had contempt for the very same professional leadership they now wish to revive. But let’s not get too adversarial this early in the Commission’s process.

The project is a great idea as the Commission will probably recommend something novel like it’s time for community pharmacy to adopt a clinical future. To do so, it might further recommend that our CPOs identify a body or an organisation to articulate the “clinical voice of pharmacy professionals”.

If so, it must be an organisation other than the current regulators. The General Pharmaceutical Council and its baby brother, the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland, largely stymied practice innovation since most registrants are petrified of them.

We need an organisation, the Commission will hopefully say, that is professionally representative, but it cannot be a trade or negotiating body, or a union, so the NPA, AIM, CCA, PDA, CPNI, PSNC and CPS are all out.

What about the Royal Pharmaceutical Society? Perhaps a beefed up RPS, a body which could represent all pharmacists, would be ideal? Yes, that very same organisation which, among other acts of self-destruction, recently side-stepped becoming a Royal College due to internal dysfunction. Could the RPS again be re-fashioned to deliver “strong, effective and well-respected professional leadership?"

I suppose the current batch of CPOs might be able to claim that they were not in post when regulation and professional representation were split and the GPhC was created by Tony Blair, whose administration was hell-bent on smashing any organisation that favoured well-off posh boys. 

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was both a target and collateral damage but it had all the structures, ethos, professionalism and commitment to do - and was doing - the very job our CPOs now argue needs to be done. Their predecessors helped dismantle the RPSGB and sentenced the emergent professional body to an uncertain future, one in which membership would inevitably fall to a low level, leaving it to become, as one commentator recently suggested, a publishing company with a small membership built around it.

Certainly, the RPS has been diminished to an irrelevance but back then such was the government’s zeitgeist. Back in the early 2000s, following a number of medical scandals, it was not going to end up any other way.

Now it seems - if I’m interpreting the CPOs’ letter correctly - we have come full circle. The CPOs are in clear need of a representative leadership body. The old RPSGB supported innovative practice in spades for decades. That support has largely withered over the past two decades and the resulting professional stagnation is palpable.

I could give countless examples of how we have failed to engage professional leadership to move pharmacy practice forward. One thing that sticks out is practice research. As a young pharmacist, I had the privilege to work closely with colleagues on a range of innovative projects, all centred around the RPSGB, and in particular PharmacyHealthLink.

This was professional leadership developing innovative practice. It might be fanciful at this point to even suggest that current RPS could be returned to its former glory, but it might be something the Commission could recommend.

But one thing is for sure, the Commission will not be recommending that the CPOs apologise for the damage they did, by omission and commission, to pharmacy professional leadership. But it should.

Terry Maguire is a leading community pharmacist in Northern Ireland.