General Pharmaceutical Council
The General Pharmaceutical Council is the body responsible for the independent regulation of the pharmacy profession within England, Scotland and Wales, responsible for the regulation of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy premises. It was created, along with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, in September 2010 when the previous Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was split so that representative and regulatory functions of the pharmacy profession could be separated.
Statutory
The Health and Social Care Act 2008 and the subsequent Pharmacy Order 2010 allowed for regulatory functions of the RPSGB to be transferred to the new pharmacy regulator, the GPhC. The GPhC is therefore responsible for the update and maintenance of the registers of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy premises and pharmacy training premises. These registers can be accessed electronically by any member of the public online at the GPhC's website.In addition the GPhC states that the Health and Social Care Act 2008 has sufficient provisions to allow for the transfer of regulatory powers from the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland to the GPhC in the future, subject to approval of Northern Ireland Ministers.
The principal functions of the GPhC, as stated within Pharmacy Order 2010 are;
- to establish and maintain a register of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and premises at which a retail pharmacy business is;
- to set and promote standards for the safe and effective practice of pharmacy at registered pharmacies;
- to set standards to which registrants must demonstrate that their fitness to practise is not impaired;
- to promote the safe and effective practice of pharmacy by registrants;
- to set standards and requirements in respect of the education, training, acquisition of experience and continuing professional development that it is necessary for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to achieve to be entered in the Register or to receive an annotation in the Register and to maintain competence; and
- to ensure the continued fitness to practise of registrants.
- Investigating Committee ;
- Fitness to Practise Committee ; and
- Appeals Committee.
Governance
The GPhC is governed by a fourteen-member GPhC Council, with equal numbers of lay and registrant members, which is independent from the government, the professionals it regulates and any other interest groups. The GPhC state that to reinforce this independence, all members of the GPhC Council, including the Chair are appointed by the Privy Council, rather than elected.The first Chair of the GPhC Council was Bob Nicholls CBE, a lay member with extensive experience in the National Health Service, who has previously been a lay member of the General Medical Council, among other regulatory appointments. The current Chair is Nigel Clarke, a lay member with experience of the General Osteopathic Council and chairing the Future Professional Body for Pharmacy and then the Transitional Committee, which created the prospectus for the reformed Royal Pharmaceutical Society
The GPhC Chairman was previously a partner of GJW, the firm Boots used for its public affairs and lobbying, between 1993 and 1998 and onwards. He was also part of Prime Minister David Cameron’s business trade delegation to India in 2013, the year before his appointment to the healthcare regulator in 2014.
He was also the business partner of a former Boots Superintendent, who is now the Chairman of the GPhC’s Audit and Risk Committee and also a Council member.
The Chairman of the GPhC’s Audit and Risk Committee is also the Chairman of Buttercups, an organisation that sells training courses for pre-registration pharmacists, and training courses and apprenticeships for pharmacy technicians and pharmacy support staff. The GPhC’s regulatory duties include setting standards for and accrediting the education and training of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. It also sets requirements for the education and training of pharmacy support staff.
Regulation of Pharmacy Premises
As well as regulating pharmacists and pharmacy technicians as individuals, the GPhC is also the regulator of pharmacies across Great Britain. It carries out inspections of pharmacy premises.A Freedom of Information request submitted by The Pharmacists’ Defence Association in late 2017 found that although the GPhC had issued over 3,500 sanctions against individual registrants, i.e. pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, it had never issued a single sanction for a breach of pharmacy premises standards since its inception in 2010. This was despite the fact that there were 995 occasions in the two financial years preceding the FOI request where the GPhC had identified serious issues that it wanted rectifying, where its standards hadn’t been met.
The Freedom of Information request also identified that the GPhC had never:
A further Freedom of Information request submitted by The Pharmacists’ Defence Association in mid-2018 revealed that whilst carrying out routine inspections of pharmacies, the GPhC had issued 667 ‘poor’ ratings between 1 November 2013 and 24 June 2018. A poor rating signified that:
The PDA juxtaposed this finding against the finding from its earlier FOI request that the GPhC had never issued any sanctions for premises breaches.
The GPhC keeps a "bank of acceptable tolerances" to help it decide what pharmacy inspection rating to give. It refused to disclose it, saying that it would prejudice the exercise of its functions.
As part of its role as a premises regulator, the GPhC appoints Strategic Relationship Managers to chain pharmacies with more than 50 pharmacies. The GPhC has not provided any information about this role in the public domain, such as how it contributes to pharmacy inspection results or why it treats multiple pharmacies differently. It appears that some of the inspection outcome is predetermined as a desktop exercise at a head office level before visiting the pharmacy, irrespective of how it is applied in practice. An internal document from a large pharmacy multiple stated "The GPhC is mindful that community pharmacy multiples are different from independent pharmacies in that their policies and procedures are developed centrally and much of the decision-making cannot be made at local level. Therefore, the GPhC has appointed a designated Strategic Relationship Manager to all multiples with more than 50 pharmacies. The purpose of this is to achieve improved consistency, with the Strategic Relationship Manager holding three formalised structured meetings with the Superintendent Pharmacist and his/her team each year to review corporate documents and processes. This will facilitate other inspectors’ reviews of individual premises to confirm ongoing compliance with company policies and procedures."
Potential Cheating/Collusion/Plagiarism on Pharmacy Technician Training Courses
In July 2018, The Pharmacists’ Defence Association reported on “potential cheating, collusion or plagiarism among trainee pharmacy technicians”. It stated that, “A small number of online distance learning courses are undertaken by many trainee pharmacy technicians in the UK… since 2011, an extensive set of responses to assessment questions appears to have been developing, all of which are publicly visible and indexed on online search engines. This means that trainee pharmacy technicians completing the distance learning courses can find answers to these questions and could potentially plagiarise them word-for-word to help them pass their assessments, without having conducted their own research or developing their own understanding. Some of the suggested responses to exam questions indicate what grading was obtained for that response. Communication also appears to occur through private messaging. As at 22 March 2018, the threads identified had been viewed a combined total 61,483 times.” It also stated that “GPhC-commissioned research, published in 2014, included comments relating to the potential for cheating, collusion and plagiarism on pharmacy technicians’ initial education and training courses... It is unclear what action the GPhC has taken on this matter since that time.” It is not clear whether the GPhC took any action to investigate following the PDA report.Buttercups Training responded to the PDA report, saying among other things that “cheating is a part of the human condition”. However, it said it has robust systems to detect cheating and will respond swiftly and decisively where it is discovered on its own courses.