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28th July 2009
Greetings!


Initially I saw no problems in the responsible pharmacist regulations which are due to come in to force on the 1st October. However, the Elizabeth Lee case and a number of similar incidences that seem to have been caused by low staffing numbers have started ringing very loud alarm bells about the 1st October launch.

Graeme Stafford is one of the good guys; He organised the petition to urge the government to decriminalise dispensing errors which has clearly had an effect with the DOH acknowledging that this needs to change and committing to change the law within 2 years and to implement interim measures until this can be put before parliament.

To put the effectiveness of the petition in context, 12653 signed the petition to decriminalise dispensing errors whereas only 8312 voted in favour of the changes to the future professional body!

Graeme wrote to me at the weekend asking for pharmacist to sign his online petition calling for a delay in the implementation of the RP regulations.

Please find his email below and with a link to the online petition.

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Dear ,

Please sign the petition asking for the postponement of the Responsible Pharmacist regulations:-

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/postpone-the-rp-regulations.html

There are now less than 70 days until these regulations come into effect and will affect so many of us in our everyday professional lives.

If we are going to get them postponed we need to act quickly.

What seems so utterly wrong is that we will be made completely responsible without being granted any additional control over our working environments.

Will we suddenly be able to set staff and training budgets, choose which wholesaler to use, decide how we want to design and equip our dispensaries and write our own SOPs?

How many of us will be willing to risk our employment status by standing up to our employers?

Why is there no concept of Responsible Owners?

When the chips are down, when something goes wrong, when an error occurs,  who do you think will suffer?

If you have any concerns at all about the RP regs., if you want the Council of the RPSGB to take up this cause, if you want the Department of Health to listen

then please sign the petition as soon as possible and ask as many colleagues as possible to do likewise.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/postpone-the-rp-regulations.html

Thank you, as always, for your continued support,

Graeme Stafford

http://apjonline.blogspot.com/

P.S. If you have already signed I thank you but please do whatever you can to get more of your friends and colleagues to do likewise.

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As a profession we can be pretty apathetic but i feel that this issue is really important and if we don't want to sleep-walk into an ill thought through set of regulations which will have a fundamental impact on the way you practice pharmacy, you need to take action.

To date over 3000 pharmacists have signed the online petition calling for a delay in the RP regulations. if you have concerns about the regulations, make sure you click on the link above.

Sincerely,
 
Shaun Hockey B Pharm (Hons) MRPharmS
PL-UK Recruitment Ltd