Minister for Health Simon Harris will deliver the keynote address at the three day national conference of the Irish Pharmacy Union taking place in Galway this weekend.
The IPU is holding its annual conference titled ‘Community Pharmacy: Maximising Our Potential’ at the Galmont Hotel from May 10 – 12.
This year’s conference will look at how community pharmacies can develop a broader scope of practice and engage more with the wider health system.
Health Minister Simon Harris will open the conference’s plenary session taking place on Saturday morning.
A number of motions will be up for debate at this conference addressing a broad range of issues affecting the pharmacy sector including the rollout of Sláintecare, overly burdensome bureaucracy, and calling for the reversal of FEMPI.
The first motion on the the agenda calls for the AGM to comment the Sláintecare programme: “For engaging with the IPU to explore the healthcare role of the pharmacist and looks forward to the expansion of pharmacy services as part of reforming and modernising healthcare in Ireland.”
After that pharmacists will debate calling on the HSE, PCRS and the PSI, “review and reduce the level of unnecessary bureaucracy they foist on community pharmacists which risks exacerbating the exodus of young pharmacists from the profession.”
And also on the agenda is a motion for the IPU to call on the Minister of Health “following the recent agreement with General Practitioners, to immediately commence substantive talks with the IPU to reverse FEMPI as it applies to community pharmacy contractors.”
The conference will also see a range of speakers from across the pharmacy sector including Dr Ross T. Tsuyuki from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Alberta; Margaret Wing, CEO of the Alberta Pharmacists’ Association; and Terence A. Maguire Pharmacist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the School of Pharmacy, Queen’s University Belfast.
They will be joined by others on Saturday afternoon for a roundtable discussion on ‘Sláintecare – the Future Shape of Healthcare’.
