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The issue of pharmacists' professionalism and membership of their professional body was a recurring theme at this year's RPS conference. Richard Thomas reports

The chairman of the General Pharmaceutical Council, Nigel Clarke, has sharply criticised pharmacists who are not members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS).

Speaking at the RPS annual conference earlier this month, he said the public expects pharmacists to belong to their professional body. Indeed it was €quite wrong€ for pharmacists to turn their back on the RPS.

€You should be telling colleagues that [joining the Society] is something that is expected of them by the public,€ he told delegates. The best way to protect patients, the GPhC believed, was to €support and encourage professionalism€ €“ and that meant being a member of the RPS.

The RPS Faculty, for instance, was at the heart of pharmacists' professional development going forward, he continued.

Scotland's chief pharmacist, Bill Scott, echoed Clarke's comments. He questioned whether pharmacists who had not joined their professional body were €behaving as a responsible professional€.

Mr Scott also caused a stir by suggesting that the pharmacy undergraduate curriculum should focus more on health and less on the sciences. €We need to move away from chemistry. It is not about chemistry; it is about healthcare.€ Pharmacy is not all about science, he suggested.

New Society president, Ash Soni, also explored the concept of professionalism in his address to the conference.

€It means being an expert, competent and skilful, [while] behaving in an ethical way, putting your patients first and acting in the best interests of the public. It means being dedicated to your professional development.€

The RPS, as pharmacists' professional body, does those things for individuals that they can't do on their own, he said. It provides support, recognition, networking opportunities and leadership. Moreover it enables pharmacists' development to meet the challenges of ever more complex health needs.

€We have over 27,000 members, which makes us the third biggest [professional body]. The second biggest is the Royal College of General Practitioners. We are a growing organisation and over the next couple of years I would like to see us ... become the second biggest Royal College. Maybe the RPS could be the Royal College for Pharmacy and Medicines?€

Research highlights

Among the standout pieces of research presented at the conference was a paper from the University of Bath, which found that two-thirds of pharmacists missed at least one of five dispensing errors hidden in a series of test prescriptions. Labelling errors were the most often missed.

Distractions and interruptions can lead to significant reductions in patient safety, the researchers said. €It should be a priority to reduce the interruptions and distractions in areas where medicines are prepared,€ they concluded.

Meanwhile researchers from Kingston University found that 96 per cent of smokers regarded e-cigarettes as 'very safe', while most non-smokers (63 per cent) regarded them as 'very unsafe'.

Pharmacists also expressed concerns about the safety of e-cigarettes, with 52 per cent agreeing that 'e-liquid in cartridges may be toxic'. Twenty per cent said that users had presented with adverse events, including cough and dry mouth.

Nevertheless 73 per cent of pharmacists said that they sold e-cigarettes. They also called for more training on the place of nicotine delivery devices in the smoking cessation pathway.