Tase Oputu on the Royal College of Pharmacy’s first six months — transcription

Tase Oputu: Ok, thank you. My name’s Tase Oputu, and I’m currently the president of the Royal College of Pharmacy.

Corrinne Burns: Tase Oputu will be familiar to a lot of people already. In 2023, she was elected as chair of the then Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s English Pharmacy Board. And in March of this year, she became the first president of the Royal College of Pharmacy. It’s been six months since that historical transition, so I caught up with Tase to find out more about the new College’s priorities and Tase’s own personal hopes for the College and the pharmacy sector more broadly.

But first, I asked Tase to shed a bit of light on her background.

Tase: For the majority of my career, I have been a hospital pharmacist, mainly in big acute hospitals in London and also in Kent. I mainly did clinical services, so management of clinical services. Over the last few years, I’ve done a lot more work in terms of formulary and high-cost drugs.

And over the last three years, I took a step into an integrated care board and looked after the commissioning side of things with medicines value and performance, focusing on high-cost drug use across the Kent region. So that’s where I’ve been for the last three years. And in the next phase of my career, I’ll be moving back into hospital pharmacy to again lead services in hospital pharmacy.

So that’s my background. On top of that, obviously I was elected to the previous Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s English Pharmacy Board, and I then progressed to be the chair of the English Pharmacy Board.

Corrinne: So, Tase has already held a lot of significant roles. But what was clear from my conversation with her was that this new appointment clearly means a lot, not just to Tase, but to the profession as a whole.

Tase: It’s obviously the greatest honour of my career to be the first president of the new Royal College of Pharmacy. It has been very emotional, I would say. The reaction that I’ve had from all areas of the profession, from members of the former Society and now the royal college, people who have been very happy and excited to see the progression that we’re making in the royal college.

So, from our members, definitely excitement about the future. And I would also say that even as I was chair of the previous English Pharmacy Board and having those connections to our wider stakeholders in regulation and also policymakers, that there is a tangible difference to the reception and the reaction that they have to us now being a royal college. And that, again, is positive.

It’s very positive. There is a real recognition of the significance, the potential for greater influence and what that means across all of the wider aspects of our profession.

Corrinne: One of the ways that Tase aims to use that greater influence is to level the playing field for UK pharmacists, which is a lifelong interest of hers.

Tase: I guess within the other aspects of my role as a pharmacist, people will know me because I am quite passionate about inclusion and diversity. So as part of the other parts of the roles that I was doing while I was a pharmacist in the hospital was being part of BME networks and championing inclusion and diversity through whatever channels and whatever means that I could do. So that’s been the counter side of the work that I’ve done professionally as my day job, has been doing voluntary roles on various advisory boards and staff networks. I was chair of several staff networks in the hospitals that I was working in as well.

Corrinne: We know that bias and discrimination can impact pharmacists throughout their career. I asked Tase where she thought the College’s priorities should be in regard to inclusion and diversity.

Tase: We definitely have issues to do with racism and discrimination, but we also have issues to do with the gender gap. We have issues to do with homophobia. There are so many aspects to inclusion and diversity.

And for me, it’s still a vital part of the role of us as being a royal college going forward. There is not going to be a pause or a diversion from the work that we need to do in all aspects of inclusion. I’m committed to it.

I know that the College as a whole is committed to it, and we will continue to do that work as well. I’m very pleased with the work that we’re progressing to do with differential attainment and the awarding gap.

There is much more that we will be doing in the wider aspects of inclusion and diversity as well. So that work is going to continue. It’s not going to be something that we are going to be distracted from.

It’s key, it’s vital for our pharmacists to be able to do their work well, to achieve, to be the best that they can be. It’s really important that they are able to be their authentic selves at work, that people understand how to treat each other and be kind to each other and understand all aspects of who people are when they come to the workplace.

Corrinne: Aside from discrimination, another factor influencing pharmacists’ ability to be their best selves in the workplace is the ever-present spectre of workforce pressure. I asked Tase why she thought pharmacy in particular seems to get hit so hard by this.

Tase: Yeah, it’s interesting when we consider that pharmacists are the third-largest workforce in healthcare. And I do hear this from members, the feedback that where we are not present at those decision-making places, where we’re not present in those policy-making places, our voice is being lost. And therefore, it is easier to make those cuts because people don’t understand the significance of pharmacy.

I think some areas have tilted a little bit, so where people have started to think about, oh, well, how can we release some pressure on emergency departments or into GPs, the pressure there. Oh, we do have clinicians in the high street via our community pharmacists, so the recognition is there. But what I hope through the formation of the royal college is that we can develop and be that louder, stronger, credible, influential voice that supports our pharmacy teams, our pharmacy leaders at the local level.

When decisions are being made to say, we need pharmacy at the table, we need them there, you need to hear the voice of pharmacy, that they are there and that when we speak, we are heard and that we are taken into consideration at those levels where those decisions are being made.

Corrinne: Another issue that’s not going away is climate change. I asked Tase what the College’s focus is around health and climate.

Tase: The College has been working on this for a number of years. We’ve seen our statements come through, our commitments, our pledges. And I would say one of the things that I’m very proud of is the Greener Pharmacy Toolkit, which helps and supports our pharmacists and pharmacy teams with embedding their knowledge of the health impacts of climate change and what you can do at a local level in your own practice to support the environmental impact of medicines.

It’s not just down to individual pharmacy teams. It’s a whole system. It’s a system-wide issue.

Pharmacy can play a very, very important part, but to reduce the environmental impact of medicines is very much a system process. We need much more information. We need a lot more information to help and support our pharmacists, prescribers and our patients to understand the environmental impact of medicines.

Medicines waste is significant as well. That loops through into the environmental impact and again onto climate change, reducing medicines waste through better prescribing, supporting through medicines reviews so that patients can understand their medicines and supporting them with their understanding of how to dispose of medicines appropriately, as well as for us to understand how to dispose of medicines appropriately. We need to, again through education and training, help pharmacists and pharmacy teams to understand sustainability as part of their everyday practice.

It’s not something, again, that’s happening out there to somebody else. We’ve seen the devastation of the impacts of climate change this summer through the heatwaves and how pharmacists have had to adapt, not just through their equipment and infrastructure, using that time to make sure that their medicines are stored appropriately and supporting patients who are coming in with symptoms associated with the impacts of heat. So, all of those things put together with pharmacy teams, the pharmaceutical industry, the wider health system, understanding that it’s a shared responsibility, but that we all have a part to play in addressing it.

So, again, this is work that the College will take forward. I’m really grateful and happy and proud to see that we are part of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. There’s a lot of really good work that goes through that particular alliance as well.

So, it’s great to see the royal college working in collaboration with all of the other medical royal colleges and all of the other partners in healthcare as well. So, lots that we’re doing and lots more that we will be doing.

Corrinne: So, some really big commitments there. Now, on a different note, the UK Pharmacy Professional Leadership Advisory Board ceased operations in July this year and handed over a set of recommendations for an ambitious and inclusive Royal College of Pharmacy. I asked Tase what was happening with those recommendations now.

Tase: UKPPLAB delivered to us and we agreed to the Concordat. So that was a statement which was a shared commitment to collaboration and transparency and engagement. And the best bit about that for me was the recognition of the Royal College as the professional leadership home for pharmacy.

And so, it really was a shared commitment to making a unified and collaborative future for professional leadership in pharmacy. There was almost like a baton handing over to a co-creation liaison group, which is a collective of the various organisations that had been part of the UKPPLAB. And it’s much more because there’s this recognition that the royal college is going to take forward a lot of work, it’s almost like an oversight group to look at how we are progressing with delivery. There were some very ambitious timelines and milestones that have been set through that Concordat. We’ve only met once as the liaison group, but there is such a lot of work that is happening at the moment to get that work progressed.

So, there’s a lot going on. The co-creation liaison group has met once so far just to keep the momentum going. And we will have another full meeting in October to review where we are with the different aspects of the timelines.

We’ve really, really made sure that we are prioritising this. It’s very, very important for us to do that. We have been engaging very, very widely with our stakeholders, with our pharmacy technician colleagues, with the specialist pharmacy groups, with as many people as possible to ensure that we are putting the right things in place to be successful in the endeavours and the ambitions of where we want to be with pharmacy professional leadership.

We are working very hard and we are committed to publicising, sharing the information of where we are on that journey at regular intervals. So, as I’ve said, we’ve had a preliminary meeting post the close-down of the UKPPLAB work and how we’re pulling that through into where we’re going with the royal college at the moment. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that our members and the wider pharmacy ecosystem are aware of where we are and what we are achieving and where we’re going.

So that information will be coming through.

Corrinne: Finally, I asked Tase if she had a special message for anyone listening to this.

Tase: I always try and remind people that I’m here as an elected member, as someone who works in the foothills, I would say, of pharmacy. And I’m here trying my best to understand what’s going on. I can see the enthusiasm, the excitement of people for what we can be as a royal college.

My plea at the moment is that we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do to get there. When we come out as the College to do that engagement work with our members on our longer-term strategy, on what it means in terms of changing our membership for pharmacy technicians.

I would really hope that our members and our wider non-members, that people really rally round and see the possibility of pharmacy and what we can really achieve as a unified profession. So, yes, pharmacy technicians, pharmacists, all the different sectors of pharmacy, all of our specialist groups, that there is so much that we can do together. And that people come with their hopes and their aspirations and their recommendations and their suggestions and come and talk to us about it.

If you don’t agree with things, come and talk to us about it as well. Be part of the conversation. It’s so important that we hear from everybody and that nobody’s opinions are invalid.

We need to hear the positives. We need to hear the negatives. We need all of that to be able to shape and mould our future as the royal college.

Without that information, without that participation, I would say, we won’t be able to do that.

Corrinne: And with that in mind, Tase wanted to highlight that the long-term draft strategy for the College will go out for consultation and engagement soon. We’ll certainly be covering that in The PJ when it’s published. If you’d like to read my full conversation with Tase, you can find that in the show notes and on the website.

For now, I’d like to thank Tase for speaking to us and to thank you as ever for listening. You’ve been listening to The PJ Pod, brought to you by The Pharmaceutical Journal, the Royal College of Pharmacy’s official journal.