The Pharmacists’ Defence Association chairman Mark Koziol told Community Pharmacy England chief executive Janet Morrison at the Pharmacy Show that representatives of employee pharmacists must be given a seat on the negotiator’s committee.

During a panel discussion on the future direction for community pharmacy, Koziol (pictured) firmly made the point that employee pharmacists and locums should have a say in the development of new services because it will be “individual pharmacists who are going to be taking greater risks” as the profession increasingly moves from the supply of medicines to services.

The panel included Morrison, National Pharmacy Association chief executive Paul Rees, his counterpart at the Company Chemists’ Association Malcolm Harrison and Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK president Nicola Stockmann.

Calling Morrison out from the audience, Koziol said: “When you’re looking at the future scenario for pharmacy and you’re resting it on (independent prescribing), to have four owner representative organisations and pharmacy technicians on the stage, we would be forgiven for thinking nobody is interested in the opinion of the employee and locum pharmacists.

“So, somebody in the organisation needs to have a think about that going forward. Frankly, it is the employee pharmacists and the locum pharmacists who are going to be transforming the thing.”

Picking up on Harrison’s suggestion during the discussion that “transformation and investment” are fundamental to growing the role of community pharmacies in future, Koziol said: “Actually, engagement is going to be hugely important. That’s the engagement of pharmacists who are going to take more risks as we move from supply of medicines to services.

“Individual pharmacists are going to be taking greater risks. They should have a greater say in how this goes. For years, we’ve been saying that when you sit with the government over there to come up with the new services, and we’re all waiting to see the white smoke go up the chimney so we get the big reveal to find out what it is, the workforce feels as if it’s on an agar plate over there and the owners are there, poking around with a magnifying glass over here.

“When are you going to allow, formally, employee representatives to sit on Community Pharmacy England? And I’m not talking about what you normally say, which is ‘come next Thursday for 20 minutes, we’ll give you a cup of tea and a biscuit.’

“We’re talking about giving employees a voice in Community Pharmacy England. There are more owner organisations coming out all over the place, they’ve all got a seat.

“When are you going to give those that you’re resting the future on a seat at the CPE table?”

Morrison: Seats at the CPE table is quite a challenging issue

In response, Morrison insisted “seats at the CPE table is quite a challenging issue” and suggested that by the time it enters into talks with the government, “quite a lot of the thinking and planning for services that are being commissioned has already been done and we haven’t been involved in that.”

Insisting CPE is recognised by the government as the representative body for community pharmacy contractors, Morrison said: “That’s what the main focus of our work is. I think we should be careful about considering that we should change all of that and undermining the status and the role that we play.

“And we shouldn’t overstate the role that we play. So, I’m a little bit cautious about it. But that’s not to say that I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Morrison also said she wanted to “change the way we work with the government and NHS England” so CPE can work with them “without prejudice” to “scope what kind of services we need, what kind of patient outcomes we want to achieve, what does that mean for the workforce and what does that mean to operationalise it?”

“I feel we’re fighting a battle to say ‘you’ve designed a service without necessarily talking to the people who actually have to turn it into an operational reality and deliver it,’” she said.

“So, there’s a step before what you’re actually talking about which is to say ‘let’s co-design more effectively.’ The NHS has got principles about co-design of services and that should be involving patients but that could just as easily be involving other stakeholders.

“But honestly, the way we commission, it doesn’t happen. I think that’s an important point to say ‘let’s co-develop the plans and thinking and let’s think about all the stakeholders who need to be involved in that thinking.’”

Morrison insisted that approach needed to be “driven by patient outcomes and not commissioning either just for business owners and their financial wellbeing or indeed just for the staff.”

“It has to be a more holistic view. But we’re a million miles away from ‘we just all work it out together and then forget to tell the employees,’” she said.

“We’re not being consulted early enough in the development and thinking of the plans.”