15 April 2016 marked 175 years since the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was founded. Call me sentimental but I am in awe of the fact that the mantle passed down year to year is finally trusted to us, the current pharmacy body.
When I sat down to write this letter, I thought, we have heard it all before: “Pharmacy needs to reposition itself, speak with a unified voice, polypharmacy, medicines optimisation and so on.” We all have access to the reports, statistics, analysis, what is evident and Lord Carter agrees that pharmacy adds considerable value to the NHS.
We know we are a multidisciplinary profession and it is indeed this multifaceted nature of our transferable skill set that, for example, some GPs want to utilise with the new role of practice pharmacist.
I, thus, do not wish to bore us with pharmacy terminology and acronyms, what I do want to do instead is infuse some of the fire and passion I feel for our beloved profession. In my dealings with colleagues, I hear the same thing over and over again: “What does the Royal Pharmaceutical Society do for me?”
Picture a mother beckoning her baby to walk towards her, stumbles, gets up, takes another step, stumbles again, gets up again. My Royal Pharmaceutical Society likewise beckons me, leads me, supports me, encourages me, and reassures me that it is going to be fine.
And, yet again unassuming like my grandmother who ran the household behind the scene, my Royal Pharmaceutical Society goes about her dealings with subtlety, grace and majesty.
Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, so are we, pharmacists adapting and riding each wind of change as if it were the alchemy of metamorphosis.
#votelara #myRPS
Sally “Lara” Rose
Election candidate
English Pharmacy Board
Royal Pharmaceutical Society