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.