Ensuring pharmacy’s voice is heard

As an English Pharmacy Board member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) for the past three years, I have worked hard with colleagues to ensure that pharmacy’s voice is heard by those who matter in the NHS, the government and the royal colleges.

As we advocate for new roles, such as working alongside GPs and having a clinical role in care homes, and for skills like prescribing to become the norm, we must not forget the existing important patient-facing roles. For this reason, I welcome the General Pharmaceutical Council’s consultation on patient-centred professionalism and hope that it will bring much needed change.

We must ensure that all pharmacists are enabled to work in a professional manner in order to meet patients’ needs. This will mean ending the punitive targets culture and ensuring new technologies benefit patients’ experience of pharmacy, improve safety and do not just push costs down. It will also mean continuing to lobby for read-and-write access to patient records for all pharmacists. We must also ensure that pharmacists remain present in every pharmacy to care for and provide advice to patients. Remote supervision threatens patients, as well as pharmacists’ livelihoods. If elected, I will continue to advocate for better working conditions and contracts for all pharmacists. Acting as a royal college for pharmacy, the RPS must continue its excellent work enabling and supporting all its members to be the best they can be.

Claire Anderson

Election candidate

English Pharmacy Board

Royal Pharmaceutical Society