Future working of Guild Council A major part of the away day was spent looking at the strategic plan for the next 3-5 years and considering what GHP needs to do for members and how to achieve it. It is important that GHP becomes more proactive and less reactive; although the reactive role will still be important.
Agenda for Change A 45 minute briefing was given to Council members before the main Council meeting started. This consisted of accounts of experiences within the EI sites and the lessons learned. It is vitally important that all sites have a GHP representative or AfC representative.
Council Meeting
Council Membership The president welcomed four new members to their first Council meeting. Christine Gilmour and Dave Thornton are new National members; Tom Gray the new District Member for the East of England; and Graeme Richardson the new District Member for the Northern District.
Council also wished the GHP Administrator, Preeti Farooki, well in her new career and thanked her for all her work for the Guild. She leaves Amicus at the end of June.
Agenda for Change Aintree: All pharmacist posts had gone to matching panels with the exception of the Chief Pharmacist’s, which would go next week. It is hoped to assimilate for the July salary. Everyone appearing before a matching panel needed to be as prepared as possible. Small focus groups prepared a 3-4 page summary of evidence which was taken into the panel, referred to, if necessary, and presented to the panel at the end. Aintree have a local interim agreement replacing EDC and will not be paid on-call. They have created an additional pharmacist post to cover the reduction in hours under AfC.
There has been no further movement on the pre-reg pharmacist profile. The whole issue of students is with the Shadow Executive
The job description is important, but it is the person specification which defines factor 2 (Knowledge and Skills) and therefore the band of the post.
The Review is due to finish by the end of July. There are no real details, but some information is drifting out. The main issue for all Amicus groups is on-call/out of hours. Some groups do lose out. These are predominantly A&C grades and managers with no clinical contact with patients. There has been a realisation that the system is biased towards clinical jobs and that, because there is no recognition of experience in the person specification, these posts come out too low.
Membership It was noted that there were 3860 members as of last week.
Specialisation in Hospital Pharmacy This had been one of the topics under discussion at the 33rd EAHP General Assembly in Helsinki. Specialisation would involve harmonisation of the postgraduate training of pharmacists and it is likely that by 2006 this will be a minimum standard of 3 years post degree. The EAHP outline curriculum consists of a series of tasks associated with jobs. Only those doing the jobs can use the title “Hospital Pharmacist”. The UK might decide to raise the standard for specialisation higher than this, but they cannot lower it and it may be the first step on the road to consultant. This will have ramifications for all post-graduate pharmacist training in the NHS.It is of note that, as far as Europe is concerned, the UK has only one legislative body; there is no devolution!
Colin Rodden 18.6.04