RPS CONFERENCE
WORKING TOGETHER TO ADVANCE PRACTICE
RPS
in Scotland held its fi rst National Seminar recently
in Stirling. The seminar’s theme of ‘Pharmacy working together to advance quality in practice’ was reinforced by the 120 delegates from every sector who attended from all over Scotland.
The focus of the seminar was quality in practice, following up from the joint conference with NES and using RPS’s new Quality Systems resource as a guide.
The workshops tackled many of the key issues effecting Scottish pharmacy today, including automation, SPSP, CMS, substance misuse services, dispensing errors and the utilisation of pharmacy technicians. A day was also dedicated to exploring the Faculty and Foundation programmes, underlining that quality begins from the start of your career and progresses throughout your professional journey.
Giving her fi rst keynote speech as Scotland’s new CPO at the seminar was Dr Rose Marie Parr.
22 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST
Dr Parr commenced by giving an example of a real life scenario. The scenario relates to a photograph of a 90 year old lady on her birthday; she has been recently widowed and her children have pre-deceased her. She is fortunate to have a ‘brilliant’ social network and social care package but for it all to work and to give this person the best possible quality of care, her pharmaceutical care is also crucial. At the present time, she receives all her medicines in a ‘box’ and she has lost all autonomy and individual choice over her medicines and their benefi ts or effects – a ‘train crash’ waiting to happen. The main reason she wanted the CPO role was to make Pharmaceutical Care better for this frail older lady – and the others like her across Scotland.
There are fi ve main areas of focus:
• Pharmaceutical Care – to review and refresh Prescription for Excellence and to emphasise pharmaceutical care; looking at how the patients’ journey with medicines can be improved. The vision of Pharmaceutical Care is the
right one but we need to clarify and prioritise the actions as we go forward. It needs to be real and ‘patients should be at the heart of it’.
• Safer use of medicines – one of my aims in the Scottish Government is to take a strategic look at this area and how it can be improved
• Evidence base and outcomes – there is much innovative and ground-breaking work being carried out in Scotland around pharmaceutical care but it is vital that there are open channels through which it can be disseminated. We need to publish, learn and continue to innovate on a wider basis.
• Pharmacy profession and professionalism – to look at the future education training and workforce development of the whole pharmacy profession, including technicians. Workforce planning, modernisation and advanced practice will all need to be considered alongside the initial education and training of pharmacists for the future. . The Scottish Government needs to work with the regulator and the professional body to better articulate our professionalism.
• Strategic engagement – Dr Parr noted that, as the new Chief Pharmaceutical Offi cer (CPO), she is in ‘listening mode’ and engaging with all of the NHS health boards, CPS, the regulator, professional body and Schools of Pharmacy. The advancement of pharmacy for public and patient benefi t cannot be achieved in isolation it needs to be a whole systems approach in Scotland and linking in with the rest of the UK and Internationally.
Dr Parr concluded that, by the end of her tenure as CPO, she would like be judged as having helped patients in Scotland to have improved safer and more patient-focussed Pharmaceutical Care.
Her message was reinforced by Laura McIver, the Chief Pharmacist at Healthcare Improvement Scotland, who set out ambitions and plans for Scotland to be the safest place to take medicines.
Dr Mark Sampson from MS Cubed rounded off the speeches by highlighting the differences in expertise between doctors and pharmacists before urging for greater collaboration between the two professions as their roles evolve. •
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