From Professor R. Dingwall
It strikes me as a bit of an “own goal” for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, trying to demonstrate its inclusiveness ahead of 2010, not to have selected anyone from a minority background as one of the four faces to support the national consumer media campaign.
Robert Dingwall
Director
Institute for Science and Society
University of Nottingham
Society response
David Pruce, director of policy and communications, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, responds:
The Society continues to take its equality and diversity responsibilities seriously. Finalists who participated in the RX factor competition in England, Scotland and Wales in August this year underwent a formal selection process based on finding individuals who possessed specific skills and experience to make them suitable for handling the challenging role of facing the media.
The finalists were interviewed by a panel of judges and underwent screen tests of mock interviews, to test their abilities in terms of handling news interviews.
The judging panel assessed applicants against a list of selection criteria based around media skills combined with a good knowledge of the issues affecting the professions and the wider healthcare arena.
Our profession is diverse
From Ms R. A. A. O. A. Onatade, MRPharmS
Robert Dingwall makes a pertinent point about the absence of ethnic minority pharmacists among the winners of the RX Factor (PJ, 4 October 2008, p390). In the 2007 pharmacy workforce census, non-white pharmacists made up 28 per cent of the Register and 44 per cent of new entrants (PJ, 15 December 2007, p691).
For the national faces of pharmacy not to represent this demographic is astonishing. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s response, through David Pruce, is not that of an organisation that makes every effort to ensure good equality and diversity practice is embedded into its business, practice and policies.
I note that the latest available update on the Society’s diversity and equality action plan states that no progress had been made in the previous year, and that it was unlikely that much would be made in the future unless funding is made available.1
The Society’s 2007 annual review only mentions diversity once, in a table which showed that 86 per cent of its staff are white, a figure which, again, does not reflect the ethnic make up of the membership that the Society serves.
Hopefully, the new body will act on the responsibilities that come with serving a profession as diverse as ours.
Raliat Onatade
Deputy Director of Pharmacy, Clinical Services
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Reference
1. Minutes from the March 2007 Council meeting (PDF 100K)
Cultural diversity for RX Factor winners
From Mr I. E. Williams, MRPharmS
Robert Dingwall’s suggestion (PJ, 4 October 2008, p390) that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society should have selected someone from a (presumably ethnic) minority background as one of the RX Factor winners clearly did not go far enough.
The selection should have included at least one disabled pharmacist, a Muslim, an evangelical Christian, a Hindu, a Zoroastrian and a left-handed person. Not to mention those who might represent the gay, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish and rural minorities within the profession.
Oh, and someone to represent the people who did not get selected only because they were not as good as the people who did.
What a pity there would be no room on the winners’ podium for those selected on merit. But that is cultural diversity for you. You cannot win them all.
Ian E. Williams
Chester