Next Steps for Pharmacy in Wales’ 2030 Vision announced at RPS Wales Conference
Published: 27 September 2024
This news story was published when the organisation was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
RPS Wales will once again take the lead in developing updated 3-year goals to help enable pharmacy in Wales to reach its 2030 vision, outlined in ‘Pharmacy: Delivering a Healthier Wales’ (PDaHW).
The announcement was made by RPS Wales Director, Elen Jones, and Chair of the Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee Jonathan Simms at the recently held RPS Wales Conference. This iteration of PDaHW builds on the original 10-year plan, published in 2019 and the two series of stepping stone goals from 2019-2022 and 2022-2025.
As well as the announcement on the next steps for the 2030 vision, the RPS Wales conference celebrated the significant advancements across pharmacy in Wales that PDaHW has helped push forward in recent years. It featured:
- Four presentations on the strategic developments undertaken by Digital Health and Care Wales, Health Education and Improvement Wales, the newly established NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee and an overview of the Transforming Access to Medicines (TRAMS) programme undertaken by the NHS Wales Shared Wales Services Partnership
- Eight quick-fire PDaHW Trailblazer talks from pharmacists and pharmacy technicians from all over Wales highlighted high quality and innovative practice aligned to the PDaHW vision.
Commenting on the conference and the PDaHW announcement, Elen Jones said:
“It was such a thrill to welcome nearly 200 members of pharmacy teams from all over Wales to our conference. I’d like to thank all the speakers who helped made the day such a success, especially to our inspiring PDaHW Trailblazers who all did an amazing job brining the 2030 vision to life”.
“I’d like to thank the Welsh Government and the Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee for once again entrusting RPS to take this work forward. Like me, I’m sure everyone left the conference incredible proud to be pharmacists and pharmacy technicians working in Wales and inspired to move onto the next phase of our 2030 vision”.
“Work on the new three-year goals will begin in early 2025. As always, we want to make sure the new goals reflect the views and ambitions of pharmacy teams in Wales. Therefore, we will be hosting a number of engagement events across Wales so that everyone has an opportunity to have their voice heard. Look out for dates and venues on your RPS member emails and on our RPS Wales social media”.
Read more RCPharm news stories.
Related news
New three-year goals launched to advance pharmacy services in Wales
This news story was published when the organisation was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. New goals to transform pharmacy services across Wales over the next three years have been launched today, setting out the next steps in 'Pharmacy: Delivering a Healthier Wales', the long-term 2030 vision for maximising the expertise of pharmacy teams to improve patient care. Since the vision was first published in 2019, pharmacy teams have made remarkable progress despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. With investment and workforce development, patients now benefit from more clinical services closer to home, while the rollout of electronic prescribing is underway across all settings. The 2025–2028 goals build on this progress and were shaped through engagement with more than 500 pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, support staff, students, patient representatives and healthcare partners. They focus on spreading and scaling services to ensure equitable access to care, wherever people live and however they access them. Priorities include embedding prevention and wellbeing, delivering electronic prescribing across Wales, and transforming aseptic services, starting with a new radiopharmacy facility in South East Wales. Other aims include increasing patient access to pharmacist independent prescribers, expanding the skill mix of pharmacy teams, and creating innovative career pathways that support multi-disciplinary care. Elen Jones, RPS Director for Wales, said: "This is an exciting moment for pharmacy as we begin another three-year commitment to transformation. The 2025–2028 goals take us closer to our 2030 vision, while recognising the pressures the workforce continues to face. Thanks to the passion and dedication of pharmacy teams across Wales, I am confident we are on track. "Progress has only been possible through the collective efforts of pharmacy teams and our partners. The PDaHW programme delivery board, supported by four themed subgroups, has driven momentum and kept goals in sharp focus. Their diverse membership has ensured our work reflects the needs of patients and the whole pharmacy workforce. "When barriers arise, these are escalated to the Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee, whose oversight ensures challenges are addressed and the voice of pharmacy is heard. I would also like to thank the RPS team for leading the development of this update, which captures the energy and commitment of colleagues right across Wales.” Read the new goals in Welsh. Read the new goals in English.
Open conversations, challenging questions and the case for change: roadshow reflections so far on seeking to become a royal college
This article was published when the organisation was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. As you may know, we have recently announced our proposals for change and our ambition to become a royal college following an in-depth, 18-month review of our constitution and governance. Over the past few weeks, I've been out and about with the RPS team at our roadshow events across Great Britain meeting pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists and setting out our proposals for change and our future ambitions. We’ve been delighted with the warm welcome we have had at our roadshow events so far, there have been challenging, insightful and intriguing questions at each event — as part of meaningful conversations and informed enquiry, and there has been a high level of interest and engagement in the detail we are sharing about our governance proposals. We’ve been calling this the ‘information and conversation’ stage of the process and it's really important to us that we are open and transparent about the journey we’ve been on to inform these proposed changes — and about what will happen next. So as we mark the halfway point in our series of roadshow events, I’d like to share my reflections so far. Firstly I’d like to thank everyone who has come along so far to meet with me, our Chief Executive Paul Bennett, Deputy Chief Executive Karen Baxter and Associate Director of Communications and Marketing Liz North. It’s essential we develop the final proposals, and our future strategy, with your concerns and questions in mind and we are committed to hearing your views and having an open conversation. We’ve had significant discussions about the principles that have guided our proposals and the particular areas of interest and concern that the proposals and our royal college ambitions have engendered. We welcome even challenging questions as they will help us ensure we take all points into consideration in the drafting of the final proposals we will put before our membership early in 2025. Your contributions are hugely important and we are capturing the questions and discussions at the roadshow events and will bring these together into a report which we’ll publish in December for our members and the wider pharmacy community. I’m convinced it’s time for pharmacy to take its rightful place alongside other health and medical professional leadership bodies and for RPS to seek to become a royal college — the Royal College of Pharmacy. As the professional leadership body, we need to be in a strong position to respond to change, to support the profession and to truly inhabit our leadership role for pharmacy, to the benefit of patients and the public. We believe that enacting these changes will enable us to better advocate and deliver our mission and vision, ensuring that pharmacy is always at the forefront of the safe and effective use of medicines. Enacting the proposed changes is dependent on a vote of support by our members, which we expect to take place in early 2025. Endorsement by a two-thirds majority of those members who vote will enable the changes to progress. We will set out the detail for consideration in good time before the vote and we want to we hope you will support the proposals and vote for the change. You can find out more about the proposals on our website. Catch up with our FAQs, which include what the new post-nominals are expected to be and who will be able to vote. You can also contact us at [email protected] with any questions, comments or concerns you have. In the meantime I really look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming roadshow events, where you can find out more, have your say and together we can debate and discuss the future of pharmacy.