Scotland West District Member's Report from Guild Council Meeting 3.4.2003



Agenda For Change
Council opened with a presentation on AfC by Ron Pate, Tony West, Bob McArtney and David Miller. The presentation was the nucleus of that to be presented to attendees at the Annual National Conference two days later. Clear action words are required for job descriptions, otherwise they will be too lightweight for the purpose. It must be totally clear that we provide "highly complex" advice and not "routine" advice. The situation is that we are challenging doctors' specialist knowledge and skills with ours. That is not something undertaken lightly! Where there are split responsibilities, it has been found that the job evaluation cannot properly cope with the situation. It was noted that it was unlikely that anyone outside of residency schemes will reach any of the fixed percentage unsocial hours payments, and suggested that any locally negotiated agreements were likely to affect ALL staff within the Trust, not just pharmacists.
It was noted that a lot of work was being done on Pharmacy Technician profiles through Amicus and not Unison. A network of pharmacy techs had been set up by Sarah Goodson.

It was reiterated that it is vital that pharmacy reps are appointed and trained to cope with AfC.

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Council Elections
It was reported that the number of candidates for for vacant Council seats was the same as the number of vacant seats, so no ballot was required. However, there are still two vacant National Member seats. It was agreed that Council should try to identify any obvious gaps in constituent coverage. Primary Care was identified as one gap since the resignation of Gillian Arr-Jones.
The President then welcomed the new District Member for London North, Cathy Mooney, to her first meeting of Council.

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Supplementary Prescribing
There was some discussion on supplementary prescribing and the different rates at which different regions in England were progressing. It was noted that there are unlikely to be any pharmacist supplementary prescribers before November 2003.

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Annual National Conference 2004
It was announced that the 2004 Annual National Conference was likely to take place on 23-25th April in either Nottingham or Leicester

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Annual National Conference 2005
Council was informed that early discussions had taken place with the UKCPA on a joint conference in Spring 2005. It was later confirmed at the Conference by the Chair of UKCPA that this had been agreed and that planning was underway.

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FirstDataBank IT Award
It was announced that the winner of the inaugural FirstDataBank IT Award was
Highland Primary Care Trust. Congratulations to all involved with the work.

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Annual General Meeting
It was announced that the Annual General Meeting had been postponed until June, where it was hoped to combine it with other meetings. This had been caused by the papers for the meeting not being issued in time.

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RPSGB Hospital Pharmacists Group
It was agreed that in the interests of better co-working, the chair of the HPG would be invitied to the open sessions of Council.

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Leadership Interest Group
The Management Interest Group is to be relaunched as the Leadership Interest Group and include Clinical Leadership as one aspect of the work.

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Guild Council Reports
It was agreed at the February Council meeting that each District Member would take it in turn to produce a report of the Council meeting to be used by all District Members to communicate with their members. My intention is to continue to produce my own report for immediate posting on the www.ghpscot.org.uk website. This will be updated with any omitted information once the "official" report becomes available.

Colin Rodden
24 April 2003

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