Reflecting on the APTUK conference, Liz Fidler shares her thoughts on what the Association has achieved in the last year and what comes next

I have never felt so proud to belong to the pharmacy technician profession. Did you follow the amazing comradery and updates from the APTUK conference on Twitter? Or even better were you there?

I had a truly inspiring two days, meeting conference delegates at APTUKs largest attended conference for some years in mid-September. This shows how far the profession is progressing. The content of the programme was filled with pharmacy leaders – the majority of whom are pharmacy technicians – showcasing the valued contribution made daily to enhance patient care.

I don’t think there was a single sector not represented. We even had delegates from New Zealand and Iceland, all wishing to hear about the wonderful roles and contributions made. It’s a great time to be a pharmacy technician.

I thought I would share a condensed version of my welcome speech with you, as I feel it sets the tone and theme for the conference.

Leaping to the future

This year saw the 50th anniversary of the moon landings and I wanted to take this moment to share with you some thoughts around the work that it took to get Neil Armstrong to utter some of the most famous words in the universe. 

A whole team of staff behind the scenes from the control room to the spacecraft everybody had a key role to make the dream become a reality after many failed attempts. 

Using this analogy to underpin, I wanted to share some of the key headlines from my first seven months in post as your president working with your board. We have achieved the following:

1. Development of a new entry qualification
2. Investment in foundation role analysis
3. Completion of ACPT framework modernisation
4. Co-production underway of a primary care pharmacy technician education framework
5. Development of APTUK branch support
6. Membership analysis
7. Membership business forum
8. Showcase event
9. Tech services virtual branch
10. Utilisation of IT with updates via live streams
11. APTUK Pharmacy Technician Symposium, which will take place at the Clinical Pharmacy Congress on 5-6 June 2020, in addition to conference 2020.

This is all in addition to the business-as-usual activity of running a limited by guarantee company. All of this you can find more information about from our directors and national officers. And all these activities are the foundations that we as a professional leadership body need to have in place for our members and for the wider pharmacy profession.

During the moon landings I am sure there was a sense of excitement and trepidation about what was next. For the pharmacy technician profession, I believe we are boarding that shuttle, not quite at the moon yet but very much on our way. We should be proud of that.

As a new profession of eight years we must embrace the unknown, we must seek out ways to ensure that when we do land on the moon everybody knows who we are and what we contribute to patient care.

So, on that note – lets leap to the future, be proud of our profession and collectively we can achieve so much more to make the pharmacy technician career the choice for future generations.