Sara Visram

RPS staff member

“This is a once-in-a-professional-lifetime opportunity”

What is your role at RPS?  
I’m a professional development pharmacist in the education and professional development team at RPS. We develop learning resources and support our members to develop irrespective of their stage or sector of practice. 

I’ve been a pharmacist for 20 years and an RPS member for most of that. I’ve always felt that as pharmacists we need the RPS. When a job came up here I wanted to be part of an organisation that I’ve always looked up to and feel has a great role to play. It was a really exciting opportunity.

What are the challenges you’re seeing at the moment that this move will help to resolve? 
The challenge for the profession at present is that great work is happening in practice, roles have developed, and the landscape has changed in terms of what, clinically, pharmacists are offering. But often the recognition isn’t there and, for many pharmacists, once you qualify, you do some CPD, and that’s it in terms of development. 

There needs to be more recognised ways of demonstrating advanced practice levels. I think as a royal college we’d be more on a par with other medical and healthcare peers in terms of our organisation. That will give those other healthcare professionals a better insight into what we do, and better assurance that pharmacists are up to date, relevant, and their training is in line with what other professions do. There will be better recognition for the work pharmacists do and the experience they’ve gained.

How do you think it will impact professional practice?

In terms of professional practice, I feel it will help give us a better standing. Pharmacists have always had to prove our worth, and fight our corner for what we do. Other health professionals often think of us as “the medicine guys”. Patients also can say, “you’re the medicine guys, that’s what you do, let me speak to someone who knows about my illness and my health and my condition”. But I think as a royal college, with the recognition that brings, I feel we will be better able to provide assurance for other health professionals and the public and patients about what we do.

It’s about having that confidence and pride in your profession and leadership body and vice versa. As a united profession, I think we would have better standing and be able to represent pharmacy better. We’re so much more than just the medicine guys – we provide holistic care, we’re there for the patient’s whole journey, throughout the patient’s life. We’re doing so much more in terms of diagnosis, management of conditions and monitoring, but I think our image in terms of the public hasn’t changed enough and I think as a royal college, even just with those postnoms, that’s something we’ll be able to make people understand better.

What would your message be to other voters? 
Pharmacy is changing, what patients are expecting has changed, what pharmacists are doing has changed and is going to continue to change – so we need to change the profession. That means we need a professional body that can lead that change. 

I think it’s an exciting time to be a pharmacist. You don’t get opportunities like this very often – it’s a once-in-a-professional-lifetime kind of opportunity to be part of a change and have a say on something like this. Whichever way you go, whether it’s a yes or a no, you have a voice and it’s really important not to waste that voice.