Jane Brown FRPharmS
Pharmacy Dean
“These changes will give us that unified voice across all sectors of practice, to make sure we can really get the benefits of the changes that are happening within education and training.”
What most excites you about the proposed changes at RPS?
Royal colleges have lots of roles, but the education and assurance of practice is the area I am particularly interested in.
The big change in pharmacists’ education and training is the fact that pharmacists will be independent prescribers from 2026. For me that’s the cohort of trainee pharmacists that will start with us in July next year. We’ve also been doing a lot of work over the last few years to get prescribers trained among the existing workforce. Some may not want that extra responsibility, and we have to take that into account, but whatever happens, we need pharmacists to be developing in that post-registration space.
The important thing for me about the royal college is the fact it will enable pharmacists to have the assurance that they are practicing safely and effectively through the credentialing process. This is important for all sectors. At the moment, there are lots of services within the managed sector (NHS trusts) and general practice that use prescribing skills. In England we are not quite there yet for community pharmacy, but work is happening with pathfinder sites looking at independent prescribing. So things will change for community pharmacy too, and the royal college will help us to demonstrate that people have those capabilities.
In your role you are also responsible for training of pharmacy technicians. How do you see that profession being impacted by these changes?
I think having a Royal College of Pharmacy will strengthen the position of pharmacy as a whole - not just pharmacists, but pharmacy technicians as well – and give us all a bigger platform and voice. Our professions are complementary, we are both important pharmacy professions, and pharmacy technicians are essential to making sure we can take full advantage of changes to pharmacists’ training.
I know there are some misconceptions that the Royal College of Pharmacy will automatically become the sole leadership body for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. The RPS have clearly shown how that could not happen without further consultation, and certainly not without engaging pharmacy technicians through their own leadership body, APTUK.
When the changes happen it will be for pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists. However, I think anything that a new royal college does will only benefit pharmacy technicians as well.
How will these changes affect other people in your position?
There are seven deans in England, and equivalent positions in Wales and Scotland. I also work with colleagues in Northern Ireland. For all of us, it’s really about looking at postgraduate development of pharmacists, and having the royal college there to underpin that development, particularly through assurance, which is provided by credentialing.
We need to work collaboratively on this. RPS has already written post-registration curricula and they have created a credentialing process, but we need to work together, for example to make sure that we have pharmacists to sit on the credentialing panels, but also so that employers, patients and the public we serve really understand what assurance and practice means. We want them to be confident in the capabilities of the pharmacists they are consulting with.
What would your message be to other members?
I would say we should take this opportunity. Pharmacy is often quite a hidden workforce. We’re the third biggest workforce within the NHS, but we often just get on and do things quite quietly. We need to have our voice heard. Medicines are a huge issue for the NHS – they’re second only after staffing in terms of NHS spending. We still have problems with medication errors and unnecessary admissions to hospital caused by medicines problems, so our population needs a really strong pharmacy workforce. These changes will give us that unified voice across all sectors of practice, to make sure we can really get the benefits of the changes that are happening within education and training.