Council Meeting 20/11/03 The President opened the meeting by welcoming new Council member Simon Mynes to his first meeting.
Presidents Report The President then went on to inform Council about meetings he had attended.
Agenda For Change A report of the Early Implementers (EI) meeting would form part of the next GHP AfC Bulletin. Much of the activity was now taking place in the EI sites and especially in Guys & St Thomas' and Sunderland. Five profiles had been received for comment by GHP and responses to three had been submitted. Responses to the other two would be sent within the next week. It is anticipated that pharmacist profiles will be published, or available for publishing, by Christmas. Gail Cartmail had stated that if they weren't, there would be major problems for the whole process and GHP strategy.
Testing of the matching would be carried out in the EI sites initially, but lessons learned there would be communicated to other sites.
Previous GHP guidance on job descriptions was retracted. Experience had shown that rewriting job descriptions in the language of AfC was not beneficial. Instead, job descriptions should be updated to ensure they adequately reflect the job being carried out and illustrative examples of the work should be available to back up the statements.
The case for a nationally set Recruitment and Retention Premium (RRP) has not progressed. It will not be discussed until pharmacist profiles are available and initial matching has proved or disproved the requirement for an RRP.
It was noted that on agreement on the first pharmacist profile, information and advice will be restricted to GHP members ONLY. Until now, information has been freely available to all pharmacists, regardless of membership status, in an attempt to engage the whole profession. Reps will have enough of a workload dealing with members queries without having to deal with non-members questions too. Any non-GHP/Amicus members of the EI or AFCScot mailing lists will also be removed from the lists.
It is important that non-members realise that there is a standard union rule which states that members have no rights to union representation for the first six months of membership. Waiting until there is a problem before joining means that it is too late. It should also be noted that the Department of Health (DoH) are also stating that only the unions are being consulted on AfC. If you are not a member of a union, you cannot influence AfC in any way. If you are not a GHP/Amicus member, you are on your own!
GHP Welcome Pack Work is progressing on a welcome pack for new GHP members. The contents have been agreed and costs now have to be obtained.
Awards The closing date for the Novartis Award is the 30th November 2003. Full details of the award criteria are available from me.
Healthcare Scientists Occupational Advisory Committee (OAC) Sarah Carpenter, Amicus Regional Officer with national responsibility for healthcare scientists addressed the meeting on the subject of a new OAC structure for the future. Current OACs are all based around Whitley structures which will cease to exist if AfC is agreed. Pharmaceutical Whitley Council Staff Side is the current pharmacists OAC. The proposal is for one OAC to cover all staff groups covered by the healthcare science grouping. The proposal is very much a first draft for consultation. Various omissions were identified, such as the terms of reference of the OAC and its duties and responsibilities. These are critical. It was suggested that the two main roles should be
Any matters of interest to pharmacists only should be dealt with by the GHP. The discussion was very useful in identifying points requiring clarification. A formal GHP response to the paper will be formulated and submitted.
Practice Committee It was reported that work on the following GHP position papers was ongoing - pharmacists in Public Health unlicensed medicines supplementary prescribing and discharge writing.
'ghp' It was noted that the December issue of 'ghp' would be the last. In February 2004 it would be relaunched as 'Healthcare Pharmacist'. As an experiment, the number of issues will be reduced to five and each will be tied in to a Guild Council meeting.
Celltech Medals Nominations for the Gold and Silver Celltech medals must be submitted by the end of December. They are awarded for outstanding contribution to pharmacy at a national level (gold) and a local level (silver). Nominations must be made by a District Member, so if you have any suggestions, please contact me as soon as possible.
Colin Rodden 20 November 2003