- Email: [email protected]
FROM THE WELLCOME TRUST
978
the appointment of a single pharmacist as group officer. The Ministry makes it clear that such arrangements are permissible provided that the service is organised for the benefit of the group as a whole. The group arrangement can be of particular value to hospitals too small to have a full-time pharmacist, and it can also realise the recommendation of the Joint Subcommittee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals3 that " No hospital should be entirely without the services of a
pharmacist." The circular emphasises that the group chief pharmacist should consult his colleagues and have special regard to the position of other chief pharmacists in the group, and it draws attention to the statement in the original Linstead report that, in creating a group pharmaceutical service, as much freedom as possible should be left to the chief pharmacist of the individual hospital. This may help to allay the fear of some chief pharmacists that, under the group system, they would lose their professional freedom and be subjected to irksome control by the group
pharmacist. The circular says that to use pharmacists on work requiring their special knowledge and training is wasteful, and it points out that the proper use of assistants-in-dispensing and other ancillary staff can ensure an efficient and economical service and enable the pharmacists to concentrate on truly professional work. It adds that, as far as practicable, each section of the work should be supervised by a pharmacist; and clearly the employment of so many assistants that proper supervision will not be feasible is not contemplated. Another valuable suggestion is that ancillary staff should remain long enough in the department to become thoroughly familiar with their duties. Too often the pharmacy has had to make do with the occasional help of porters and cleaners from a common pool, and of clerical staff unaccustomed to pharmaceutical terms. The re-emphasis of the Linstead report’s recommendation that" every opportunity should be taken to encourage both pre-graduate and post-graduate students of pharmacy to obtain their practical experience in hospitals " is important. The establishment of an adequate number of posts for such training is essential in order to ensure that there are enough entrants to hospital pharmacy, which has already been deprived of many valuable recruits The circular also because of shortsighted policies. recommends the appointment of permanent pharmaceutical advisory committees in each region. This important suggestion should be immediately followed; for where such committees already exist they have given valuable advice. Finally, the circular states that the Whitley Council will consider the allowance to be made to the group pharmacist. This should not be done in isolation. If the hospital pharmaceutical service is to be saved from its present downward trend, the whole salary structure should be reappraised, and a career value given to all grades. The application of the scales should be much less rigid than in the past, and hospital authorities should be freer to make suitable awards for special responsibility or special merit. Many young pharmacists who would like to make hospital pharmacy their career feel unable to do so under present conditions. Implementation of the two Linstead reports will ensure adequate status; and, if the Minister can persuade the Whitley Council to give not
3.
Services Council: Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in H.M. Hospitals. Stationery Office, 1958. see Lancet, 1598, i, 422, 487.
Ministry of Health, Central Health
suitable career value to hospital pharmacy in recognition of the long training and high academic standards necessary for qualification as a pharmacist, he will find that the problem of staffing has been solved, and the service as a whole will become more stable and efficient.
a more
FROM THE WELLCOME TRUST
THE first report of the Wellcome Trust in 1956 covered twenty years (1937-56) and recorded the allocation of just The second, published this month,’ over El million. covers only two years (1956-58), but records the allocation of about the same sum. Unlike most anomalies, this one is encouraging; the quickening tempo of the Trust’s work and the steady and assured interpretation of its policy confirm the value of the earlier years of unobtrusive
preparation. According
to Sir Henry Wellcome’s will, the Trust research in human and animal medicine and supports the history of medicine, and museums and libraries serving medical research and medical history. In translating these general aims into grants, buildings, and equipment the trustees have during the past two years sanctioned fifteen building projects including: A Wellcome annexe, Institute of Clinical Research, Middlesex Hospital (El 1,000); two new wings to the research block of the Institute of Orthopxdics at Stanmore, Middlesex (E43,000); an extension to the clinical research block at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham (S95.000); extensions to the laboratory and animal accommodation for the depart-
of anatomy, University of Birmingham (E36,500); a research floor with animal accommodation in the extension of St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London (E70,000); a sprue research unit at the Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore, South India (El 0,000); a Wellcome laboratory of pharmacology and experimental chemotherapy in the extension to the Chester Beatty Research Institute, London (E40,000); Wellcome research laboratories of experimental medicine and surgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital of Sydney, New South Wales (C 17,000); research laboratories for the departments of neuroendocrinology and of neuropathology, Institute of Psychiatry, London (E37.000).
ment
A motor cruiser is an unusual piece of research equipment, but the Lady Dale, given to the Medical Research Council at a cost of E26,000 and named by them after the wife of the chairman of the trustees, has proved her worth on the Gambia as a floating laboratory for field investigations and as a link between the main laboratories at Fajara and branch laboratories upstream. Other equipment provided by the Trust as gifts or on indefinite loan are: A Gibbon-Mayo pump-oxygenator and accessories, Nuffield Department of Surgery, Oxford (El 8,000); electron microscopes to the London Hospital Medical College, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, Birmingham Medical School, the University of Edinburgh (department of anatomy), the University of Oxford (Sir William Dunn School of Pathology), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the M.R.C. Biophysics Research Unit, King’s College, London (total cost f81,500).
During the past two years the Trust has made no grants for the construction of medical research museums, but it has given help to medical research libraries in London, Montreal, Liverpool, and Edinburgh. THE next session of the General Medical Council will open Tuesday, May 26, at 2.15 P.M., when Sir David Campbell, the president, will deliver an address. The Disciplinary Committee will sit on Wednesday, May 27, at 10.30 A.M. on
1. Obtainable from the Trust, 52,
Queen Anne Street, London, W.1.
the appointment of a single pharmacist as group officer. The Ministry makes it clear that such arrangements are permissible provided that the service is organised for the benefit of the group as a whole. The group arrangement can be of particular value to hospitals too small to have a full-time pharmacist, and it can also realise the recommendation of the Joint Subcommittee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals3 that " No hospital should be entirely without the services of a
pharmacist." The circular emphasises that the group chief pharmacist should consult his colleagues and have special regard to the position of other chief pharmacists in the group, and it draws attention to the statement in the original Linstead report that, in creating a group pharmaceutical service, as much freedom as possible should be left to the chief pharmacist of the individual hospital. This may help to allay the fear of some chief pharmacists that, under the group system, they would lose their professional freedom and be subjected to irksome control by the group
pharmacist. The circular says that to use pharmacists on work requiring their special knowledge and training is wasteful, and it points out that the proper use of assistants-in-dispensing and other ancillary staff can ensure an efficient and economical service and enable the pharmacists to concentrate on truly professional work. It adds that, as far as practicable, each section of the work should be supervised by a pharmacist; and clearly the employment of so many assistants that proper supervision will not be feasible is not contemplated. Another valuable suggestion is that ancillary staff should remain long enough in the department to become thoroughly familiar with their duties. Too often the pharmacy has had to make do with the occasional help of porters and cleaners from a common pool, and of clerical staff unaccustomed to pharmaceutical terms. The re-emphasis of the Linstead report’s recommendation that" every opportunity should be taken to encourage both pre-graduate and post-graduate students of pharmacy to obtain their practical experience in hospitals " is important. The establishment of an adequate number of posts for such training is essential in order to ensure that there are enough entrants to hospital pharmacy, which has already been deprived of many valuable recruits The circular also because of shortsighted policies. recommends the appointment of permanent pharmaceutical advisory committees in each region. This important suggestion should be immediately followed; for where such committees already exist they have given valuable advice. Finally, the circular states that the Whitley Council will consider the allowance to be made to the group pharmacist. This should not be done in isolation. If the hospital pharmaceutical service is to be saved from its present downward trend, the whole salary structure should be reappraised, and a career value given to all grades. The application of the scales should be much less rigid than in the past, and hospital authorities should be freer to make suitable awards for special responsibility or special merit. Many young pharmacists who would like to make hospital pharmacy their career feel unable to do so under present conditions. Implementation of the two Linstead reports will ensure adequate status; and, if the Minister can persuade the Whitley Council to give not
3.
Services Council: Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in H.M. Hospitals. Stationery Office, 1958. see Lancet, 1598, i, 422, 487.
Ministry of Health, Central Health
suitable career value to hospital pharmacy in recognition of the long training and high academic standards necessary for qualification as a pharmacist, he will find that the problem of staffing has been solved, and the service as a whole will become more stable and efficient.
a more
FROM THE WELLCOME TRUST
THE first report of the Wellcome Trust in 1956 covered twenty years (1937-56) and recorded the allocation of just The second, published this month,’ over El million. covers only two years (1956-58), but records the allocation of about the same sum. Unlike most anomalies, this one is encouraging; the quickening tempo of the Trust’s work and the steady and assured interpretation of its policy confirm the value of the earlier years of unobtrusive
preparation. According
to Sir Henry Wellcome’s will, the Trust research in human and animal medicine and supports the history of medicine, and museums and libraries serving medical research and medical history. In translating these general aims into grants, buildings, and equipment the trustees have during the past two years sanctioned fifteen building projects including: A Wellcome annexe, Institute of Clinical Research, Middlesex Hospital (El 1,000); two new wings to the research block of the Institute of Orthopxdics at Stanmore, Middlesex (E43,000); an extension to the clinical research block at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham (S95.000); extensions to the laboratory and animal accommodation for the depart-
of anatomy, University of Birmingham (E36,500); a research floor with animal accommodation in the extension of St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London (E70,000); a sprue research unit at the Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore, South India (El 0,000); a Wellcome laboratory of pharmacology and experimental chemotherapy in the extension to the Chester Beatty Research Institute, London (E40,000); Wellcome research laboratories of experimental medicine and surgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital of Sydney, New South Wales (C 17,000); research laboratories for the departments of neuroendocrinology and of neuropathology, Institute of Psychiatry, London (E37.000).
ment
A motor cruiser is an unusual piece of research equipment, but the Lady Dale, given to the Medical Research Council at a cost of E26,000 and named by them after the wife of the chairman of the trustees, has proved her worth on the Gambia as a floating laboratory for field investigations and as a link between the main laboratories at Fajara and branch laboratories upstream. Other equipment provided by the Trust as gifts or on indefinite loan are: A Gibbon-Mayo pump-oxygenator and accessories, Nuffield Department of Surgery, Oxford (El 8,000); electron microscopes to the London Hospital Medical College, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, Birmingham Medical School, the University of Edinburgh (department of anatomy), the University of Oxford (Sir William Dunn School of Pathology), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the M.R.C. Biophysics Research Unit, King’s College, London (total cost f81,500).
During the past two years the Trust has made no grants for the construction of medical research museums, but it has given help to medical research libraries in London, Montreal, Liverpool, and Edinburgh. THE next session of the General Medical Council will open Tuesday, May 26, at 2.15 P.M., when Sir David Campbell, the president, will deliver an address. The Disciplinary Committee will sit on Wednesday, May 27, at 10.30 A.M. on
1. Obtainable from the Trust, 52,
Queen Anne Street, London, W.1.