APTUK not consulted on RPS proposal to represent pharmacy technicians

The Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK) has said it wasn’t consulted on the recent proposal from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) that it should represent pharmacy technicians as well as pharmacists.

In a statement issued last week, Claire Steele, president of APTUK, said: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, APTUK did not contribute, nor were we consulted on the content of this submission’.

The RPS argued that a single leadership body for both professions would ‘amplify pharmacy’s collective voice’ and ‘achieve a more unified approach to pharmacy leadership’, as part of its submission to the UK Commission on Pharmacy Professional Leadership last week.

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Ms Steele added that APTUK is ‘engaged with and fully supportive of’ the commission and did not wish to ‘pre-empt or undermine’ its outputs.

In a statement which she said is reflective of APTUK’s own submission to the commission, Ms Steele emphasised that pharmacy technicians are registered healthcare professionals in their own right and that ‘it would not be conducive for harmonious professional relationships for one profession to assume responsibility for another’.

While pharmacy technicians do dispense medications, ‘it is not future facing or in the interests of patient care and the pharmacy technician profession to continually perpetuate the notion that this is all we can do’, she added.

She said that pharmacy technicians ‘must have access to and be represented as an equal pharmacy professional’ and that ‘the tokenistic approach to pharmacy technician representation to date must stop and be replaced by inclusive, proportional representation.’

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APTUK and its members would consider any proposed changes for pharmacy professional leadership, and that it would continue to collaborate with other organisations, ‘but we will only do so as an equal partner,’ she added.

Tess Fenn, FAPharmT, pharmacy technician educational consultant, said: ‘If we lived in a just world where equal professional partnership and working together respecting others knowledge, skill and competence for the best patient outcomes was the norm then one professional voice would be the ideal.

‘However, recent RPS publications and approaches have shown, in reality, this will not happen. As such, pharmacy technicians need a strong unilateral representative voice of their own. This is in recognition of the tremendous impact they already have, and will have in the future, on clinical healthcare as pharmacy professionals in their own right.’

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As part of wider criticism of the RPS, pharmacist Stephen Mosely argued on Twitter that if the decision to include pharmacy technicians had been made 10 years ago then it would have been welcomed, but added: ‘Quite frankly it's absurd that [the RPS] think that any technicians would actually want to pay ££ to be 'represented' by them.’

The RPS declined to comment.