Pharmacy education reforms must not ‘constrain entrepreneurialism’
Government plans to improve healthcare education by requiring healthcare providers to provide data, professional education and training may not be practical to implement in pharmacies, MPC said.
"[The requirements] may be counterintuitive to the market environment of community pharmacy and constrain entrepreneurialism, which often depends on opportunity, flexibility and incentives," MPC explained.
The board cited the 50 per cent increase in community pharmacy pre-registration capacity responding to need for the training as an example of the industry's rapid pace of development, asking: "Would this pace of workforce development and deployment be achievable within the [government's] proposed arrangements?"
It also highlighted that there was a lack of incentive for pharmacies as non-NHS employers to comply with the government's workforce proposals. "Thought needs to be given to building in incentives to the pre-registration grant available to community pharmacy contractors, and reimbursing the costs to training student pharmacy technicians."
But the board agreed it was vital to involve pharmacist employers in securing "adequate capacity and distribution of high-quality training".
It added: "Given the high cost, acknowledged inefficient use and unacceptable level of preventable accidents with medicines in the NHS, it is also important that particular efforts are made to increase the engagement of pharmacy in multi-professional workforce planning and education and training."
Please note You must be a registered user of Chemist+Druggist and logged in to add comments. Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of Chemist+Druggist. Comments are considered in the public domain and may be used in future Chemist+Druggist coverage. We accept no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the accuracy or the content of member comments.
