Nadia Attura
All pharmacists employed by health boards and trusts in Wales should be members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and should engage with the RPS Faculty processes, according to a position statement adopted by the All Wales Chief Pharmacist Committee. The RPS Faculty is the Society’s professional recognition programme that offers RPS members support networks, access to experts and mentors, alongside the opportunity to build a portfolio of knowledge and skills.
Suzanne Scott-Thomas, chief pharmacist at Cwm Taf University Health Board and acting chair of the RPS Welsh Pharmacy Board, made the announcement at the RPS annual conference in Birmingham on 13 September 2015.
“It is an all-Wales position on the Faculty,” Scott-Thomas explained. “It’s for each chief pharmacist to take this away back to their organisations and … [decide] how they are going to do it,” she said. “They have all signed up to that position statement.”
The announcement comes five months after Cwm Taf University Health Board declared that all pharmacists employed by the board should join the RPS, engage with the Faculty and achieve membership at an appropriate level — a policy that it aims to adopt over the next three years. Four of the 85 pharmacists in the board have already gained Faculty membership, 12 are due to submit their portfolios in September 2015 and a further 16 are planning to make a submission in April 2016.
