Pharmacy needs to firmly establish itself as a caring, compassionate sector if it is to fit in with changing healthcare models, argued Rob Darracott in the New Year lecture. Charlotte Rixon reports

Community pharmacy needs to increase the speed at which it redefines itself as an integrated, caregiving health profession, claimed Professor Robert Darracott, chief executive of Pharmacy Voice, at the 2015 UCL School of Pharmacy New Year lecture. In the lecture, entitled ‘Care, Compassion and Community Pharmacy: A Dance to the Music of Time’, Professor Darracott declared that the Francis report had been “a wakeup call for all those working in healthcare”, and an opportunity for the primary care professions to re-evaluate what care and compassion means to them.

Enough evidence

Speaking from a personal viewpoint, Professor Darracott said that there was already enough evidence to support pharmacy’s ability to provide tailored care to patients and that compassion needed to be embedded into pharmacists’ roles, rather than viewed as “an add-on”. He went on to discuss how pharmacy could tackle obstacles to change, so that it could be a part of the new models of care outlined in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View. In particular, he urged the profession to overcome its “poor track record of implementing good ideas” by “moving on from endless pilots”. “We can’t keep waiting for permission to play a bigger role in healthcare delivery; the time is right to act now, changing how we work and doing things better,” he told delegates.

Working together

Professor Darracott also argued that the current A&E crisis could have been lessened had the Government placed greater emphasis on developing community pharmacy and other primary care services rather than restructuring the NHS. In closing, he set down the challenge for pharmacists, other primary care clinicians and NHS England to work together to develop “a universal model of primary care that is really fit for the 21st century”.