History of the PDA

Lourette Latif Philips elected as the 50th President of NAWP

Lourette Latif Philips, a Community and Prison Locum Pharmacist, is elected as the new President of the PDA NAWP (National Association of Women Pharmacists) Network

The pharmacy supervision practice group publishes its report

Over the course of nine collaborative and positive workshop-style discussions the supervision practice group aimed to provide recommendations to reframe legislation, regulation and professional standards and guidance to achieve a new vision for community pharmacy.

PDA was the voice of employed and locum pharmacists in the group, while other group members included representatives of community pharmacy owners and of pharmacy technicians.

PDA LGBT+ Network participates in it’s first Pride event

Members and supporters of the PDA LGBT+ Network joined in the Manchester Pride Parade, which took place over the August Bank Holiday weekend.   

PDA publishes innovative proposals around opportunities for pharmacists in post-Covid-19 pharmaceutical care.  

Ayah Abbass is elected as the 49^th President of the National Association of Women Pharmacists

PDA Education expands online

The PDA already has a proud history of providing education to members, including the popular “Aiming High” and “Finishing First” in person courses for pre-registration trainees, which have hundreds of attendees each year.

In the context of the pandemic lockdowns and with “provisional pharmacists” requiring more support, the PDA launches the PDA digital Education Hub.  The program of learning available from the hub expands over the following years as the central platform for PDA’s online member courses.  PDA Education can now cater for thousands of learners.

After the pandemic lockdown, PDA Education restarts and expands its range of in-person courses.  Members can also access additional training from several of the federations to which PDA is affiliated.  The courses are FREE to the members.

The PDA joins the Prescription Charges Coalition to work with patient groups in England concerned about charges preventing access to medicines.  

The annual meeting (held virtually because of the pandemic) hears that PDA membership is now more than 30,000 members, and the organisation has more than 40 members of staff. PDA becomes the largest pharmacists’ membership organisation in the UK.

PDA is also now one of the 25 largest trade unions in the UK.  It is the sixth largest exclusively for a health profession with just the British Medical Association, Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, Royal Colleges of Midwives, Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Occupational Therapy having greater numbers of members.

The Covid-19 global pandemic requires the whole country to change how it operates.  At least four pharmacists died due to Covid-19. Overnight the PDA team become remote workers and throughout the year champion the position of pharmacists within the pandemic response with topics such as government and/or employer attitudes to PPE, compensation and regulation created further challenges to those fighting the virus.

In Great Britain, “Provisional Pharmacists” are created because Pre-reg exams for the cohort are delayed until 2021, retired pharmacists are also encouraged to temporarily rejoin the register.

The introduction of online exams causes many problems for candidates and the PDA supports trainee pharmacists to navigate those issues.

The PDA’s practical support for pharmacists during the pandemic, includes providing a digital ID card to enable members to prove why they were out of their homes during the strictest lockdowns.

As the vaccination is introduced, the PDA create a portal that enables locum pharmacists to be included as a priority alongside their employed colleagues. The portal is made available to all locums, whether a PDA member or not.

After more than 8 years of legal proceedings, Boots pharmacists are finally balloted on de-recognising the Boots Pharmacists Association.  The “yes” result enables 6,500 Boots pharmacists to hold a second workplace ballot to secure trade union recognition for the PDA at the largest community pharmacy employer.

An overwhelming victory for pharmacists means that for the first time, Pharmacists at Boots now have an independent voice at work and can negotiate for better pay and other improvements.

6,000 PDA members object to proposals for a pharmacist apprenticeship. The proposals are subsequently abandoned by the secretive group of employers who were behind the proposal.

PDA affiliates to the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) enabling greater collaboration with those from other professions and sectors.

The death of Alison Stamps, a community pharmacist in County Durham, who took her own life highlights the issue of pharmacists’ mental health. With more and more defence cases related to employer-employee conflicts being handled every year, the PDA sees the effect of workplace stress on many pharmacists.

This is a significant factor in the PDA’s decision to donate £1 from the membership fee of every single member, every year, to the profession’s charity Pharmacist Support.

A conference of the PDA hears that membership is more than 20,000 members.  By now the PDA employs more than 20 staff members.

PDA campaigns for a reduction in Pharmacy Student numbers as the uncontrolled increase in university course places raises concerns that over-production of pharmacists is starting to negatively impact the profession.

The PDA petition against the GPHC’s proposals for P-Meds to be on self -selection receives more than 5,000 signatures.

The Employed Pharmacists of the European Union (EPhEU) federation is founded. The PDA will become the UK member.

After many months of member surveys and focus group activity, PDA launches “RoadMap” policies in Scotland   and England and shares a new strategic vision for the future of pharmacy which is based on pharmaceutical care and which relies on the unique clinical skills of pharmacists as experts in medicines.

While the legal challenge about recognition continues, PDA are successful in challenging Boots contractual changes when a judge in a tribunal agrees that the reduction of premium pay for weekend work was unlawful.

The PDA annual meeting hears that membership has significantly passed the milestone of 15,000 members.

The regulatory powers of the RPSGB are transferred to the newly formed General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC). The society retains its professional leadership role, and with the “Great Britain” part of its RPSGB name dropped from day to day use, now uses the “Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS)” as its name.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) continues unaffected as the regulator for NI.

PDA Union passes the tests to be certified by the trade union regulator as being free from the control of any employer(s) and is awarded a certificate of independence. The union can now request recognition for collective bargaining and decides to approach Boots as the largest community pharmacy employer for talks on recognition on the basis that success here will provide useful lessons for forthcoming recognition requests with other employers.

Unbeknown to the PDA, in parallel to initial conversations with the PDA, Boots signs a recognition agreement with its own ‘in house’ pharmacist union called Boots Pharmacists Association (BPA) and then argue that under the law this blocks an application for recognition from another union. The recognition agreement signed by the BPA actually prohibits them from negotiating better terms and conditions of employment for Boots pharmacists.

The executive committee of the BPA refuse to rescind this agreement even though they were increasingly described by specialist legal publications as a ‘sweetheart union’.

With thousands of pharmacists disadvantaged, the longest legal challenge against both Boots and BPA was launched by the PDA.

Following on from the success of the Save Our Society campaign, the PDA organises and supports a slate of candidates for the RPSGB elections as part of the campaign to Stop Remote Supervision. All seven candidates are successfully elected.

The PDA support pharmacist Elizabeth Lee who initially faced gross negligence manslaughter proceedings following a dispensing error.  This re-emphasised the need to decriminalise such matters.

After initially being given a suspended prison sentence for the dispensing error, the PDA legal team succeed in persuading the Royal Court of Appeal to interpret Section 85.5 of the Medicines Act in an entirely different way. The clarification meant that in future pharmacist employees and locums could no longer commit an offence under this section of the Medicines Act (labelling offences) as the Appeal court judges agreed that this offence could only be committed by an owner of the pharmacy business.

The majority of the issues PDA members want help with are related to employment.  However, as the PDA delivers positive outcomes for members in this area of activity, employers increasingly block PDA personnel access to workplace meetings on the grounds the PDA is not a registered trade union.

The PDA Union is created and officially registers with the Trade Union Certification Officer. The first union executive elections are held, John Murphy is elected as the PDA Union’s first General Secretary. The PDA becomes the only independent trade union exclusively for pharmacists in the UK.  Pharmacists are entitled to PDA Union membership as an extra benefit of their existing Defence Association membership.

The PDA begins campaigning for the decriminalisation of dispensing errors.

Mark Koziol becomes the Chairman of the PDA taking on a significantly outward facing role and John Murphy becomes the director, the staff complement has increased to ten.

The government wants the RPSGB to end its representative credentials and become solely a regulator of pharmacists, an act which would risk losing the professional leadership body.  The RPSGB Council at the time support this change.

Mark Koziol is one of four pharmacists to lead the “Save our Society” campaign involving both political action through an RPSGB Council election campaign in which seven “Save our Society” candidates had to replace seven of the existing members of council who were up for re-election.

The SOS campaign also involved a legal challenge through the courts. Because of the legal action, the Governments Privy Council delayed the approval of the changes to the RPSGB Royal Charter that had been proposed by the existing RPSGB Council ; which would in effect have turned the RPSGB into solely a regulator and pharmacists would have lost their membership body. The delays occurred until the outcome of the legal challenge would become known.

All pharmacists were encouraged to crowdfund contributions to the legal costs and £115,000 was raised in this way. The legal case allowed enough time for the elections to conclude and on the day after the legal case concluded (and was lost), it was announced that all seven “Save our Society” candidates had been elected onto RPSGB council. This extra-ordinary achievement, meant that the new RPSGB Council now had a majority of just one and voted to withdraw what became known as the ‘discredited charter’ which meant that even though the legal action was lost, the Privy Council did not have a new Charter to approve and the representative function of the RPSGB had been saved. The four pharmacists who led the legal action funded the balance of the legal costs (a further £235,000) themselves.

Consequently, pharmacists retained their representative body, and an entirely new regulator for pharmacy in Great Britain was created (the GPhC). As a result of the campaign’s success, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society was able to continue its 160 year-old history as a membership body for pharmacists.

The first issue of Insight magazine announces that the Pharmacists’ Defence Association is established to provide legal defence services to pharmacists and pre-regs in the event of indemnity claims, as a similar entity to the Medical Defence Unions that already exist for doctors and other health professionals.

Mark Koziol is the Director, pharmacist John Murphy becomes the General Manager and three other members of staff are employed in the office.

Mark Koziol, an Aston graduate qualified as a pharmacist, he would go on to be one of the founders of the Young Pharmacists’ Group in 1985 and was instrumental in raising £250,000 in donations to establish the multi-award-winning not-for-profit Social Enterprise YPG pharmacy.

Mark then established PPLS a locum agency which prior to its sale in 2003 operated in eight countries. He was elected to the RPSGB Council in 1997.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is created as a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) to coordinate international health affairs and promote the highest possible level of health for all peoples.

Meanwhile in the United Kingdom the creation of a National Health Service (NHS) entitling people to free prescriptions significantly increases dispensing volumes within community pharmacies.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland is established by the Pharmacy and Poisons Act (Northern Ireland).

European pharmacists’ associations, who have met sporadically over the previous half century, formally constitute an International Pharmacy Federation (FIP). It will eventually expand to become the global body representing pharmacists and be formally recognised by the World Health Organisation.

The National Association of Women Pharmacists (NAWP) is established to enable all women pharmacists in the UK to realise their full potential and raise their profile by being educationally, socially and politically active.