Applying for a new role in a new industry — Weekly Newsletter # 3
Hello friends
It has been a busy week that I forgot to make time for this newsletter. I came across an advertisement for the position of paralegal at the GPhC and this seems like a good fit for my background and my ambition to develop a career as a barrister. The advertisement can be found here if anyone else is interested.
It took me about. a week to prepare the application. I started by refreshing my understanding of the book, 7 Seconds CV by James Reed. The basic premise of the book is that you only have seven seconds to impress recruiters. I summarised the key points of the book and implemented the structured approach that was suggested. I will share my CV and covering letter once I know the outcome of this application.
One of the key requirements of the role is the ability to understand complex legislation concerning medicines and controlled drugs. Additionally, as the role will require the person to work in the Fitness to Practise team, I thought I start by outlining the relevant law.
You can scroll down to the end for a summary of the law of England and Wales regarding the Fitness to Practice of pharmacists registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
On another note, I wrote this blog post while on a train to Maidenhead for a locum pharmacist shift. I wrote about my struggle with trains and one interesting lesson from the débâcle. Check it out here.
Food Wars — 食劇（しょくげき) の ソーマ
This is an anime that revolves around Soma Yukihira (ゆきひら ソーマ) an aspiring chef who is currently studying at Totsuki Culinary Academy 遠月茶寮料理學園 (とうつきさりょうりょうりがくえん).
I am obsessed with this anime. Soma is very resilient and his determination to succeed gave me hope and the drive to keep on going. Despite losing to his dad, about 490 times as far as episode 16 is concerned, he doesn’t give up and try again. He is accustomed to failure (his emotional reaction to it was not negative) and strives to get better and better every day.
This is the kind of spirit that I want to emulate in my life particularly relating to my pursuit of a legal career. No matter how many times I fail, I must get back up again and be better next time. Learning and practising Japanese reminds me of the spirit that most Japanese people had and I need this to be persistent.
だから、日本語を勉強しています。
Matt vs Japan
You might be wondering why I suddenly used Japanese writing in my post and the reason is that I discovered this YouTube channel, Matt vs Japan, about an American guy who achieve fluency in the Japanese language to the point that he is often mistaken as a real 日本人 (Japanese person).
YouTube algorithm showed this video on my feed and that rekindled my passion for Japanese ie 日本語. I decided that I want to get serious about achieving fluency. This time, I am going to have fun with it. The goal is not just to sit for exams but to be able to speak Japanese when I visit Japan in the next few years.
One of the ways Matt learned Japanese is by shadowing how characters in anime speak. The caveat with anime is that Japanese people don’t usually speak like that. However, anime is a fun way of learning so I decided to start with anime and supplement it with listening to podcasts where Japanese people speak the language normally.
This realisation then led me to discover the third thing that I enjoyed this week.
Let’s Learn Japanese from small talk
This is a podcast where two Japanese persons speak Japanese in a normal way. Even though I don’t understand most of the conversation, it helps me build a picture of what the intonation is like. My plan is to just listen to this podcast whenever I am doing housework or chores so that I can train my subconscious mind.
This is actually how I learned to speak English somewhat fluently. I listened to The Archers while sleeping, and eventually, I picked up words that I don’t; quite remember reading about. I digress.
The point is that to be able to speak fluently in a language, one needs to build a mental model and that model includes listening to how native speakers speak.
That will be all from me this week.
Read further if you are interested to read about the law concerning the Fitness to Practice of a pharmacist.
Before you do that, just a disclaimer, this is not legal advice. If you need any advice for your specific circumstance, please consult your lawyers and get independent advice.
For simplicity, references to pharmacists also includes pharmacy technicians.
Let’s start with the source of law. As a pharmacist, if I encounter any legal issues, I will first check the latest edition of Medicines, Ethics and Practice, published by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. If the law needs further clarification, I will refer to Dale and Appelbe’s Pharmacy Law and Ethics. These are the two main secondary sources on legal and ethical issues that might arise in the course of a pharmacist work.
However, these two sources are secondary sources of law and it is not the law. Lawyers must possess the ability to locate the primary law and interpret it correctly. The second issue is where disputes often arise and it is the duty of the judicial system to decide the correct interpretation.
The source of GPhC power to register a person as a pharmacist can be found in the Pharmacy Order 2010/331. This is a form of delegated legislation that derives its power from sections 60, 62(4) and (4A) of, and Schedule 3 the Health Act 1999. GPhC also derives its power from the National Health Service Act 2006.
For the purpose of this outline, I will not scrutinise the wording of the relevant sections in detail but this will be something that I will do in future post.
GPhC has the power to set requirements for entry, retention and renewal into the register. One of those requirements is that GPhC must be satisfied that the fitness to practice of the individual concerned is not impaired (The Regulation of Healthcare Professionals, 2nd Ed)
Let’s figure out first the meaning of fitness to practice. According to the GPhC’s website, a person is fit to practise if the person possesses the “ skills, knowledge, character and health necessary to do one’s job safely and effectively … “.
GPhC explained further that a person is fit to practise if the person acts professionally and meets the principles of good practise set out in the standards, guidance and advice issued by the GPhC. The issue here is that this guidance is merely a policy document and someone with sufficient locus standi can challenge whether the standards are ultra vires.
This is what happened in R. (on the application of Pitt) v General Pharmaceutical Council [2017] EWHC 809 (Admin). The issue was whether the standard that GPhC expects all pharmacy professionals to behave appropriately at all times including one’s private lives exceed the power that it was granted. In other words, the court has to decide whether this standard is ultra vires. The court decided that GPhC did not exceed its power because, on a fair interpretation of the standard as a whole, the standard is rooted in real life and common sense.
The appellant argued that the GPhC’s power is confined to preventing misconduct. The court disagreed and accepted the respondent’s argument that the GPhC also has a duty to promote and maintain public confidence in the pharmacist profession, pursuant to Art. 48 of the 2010 order.
Part 6 of the 2010 order contains the provision for Fitness to Practise in detail. It suffices to say that the requirement is quite lengthy but not burdensome to anyone pharmacist or pharmacy technician.
GPhC has summarised the relevant law on its webpage which can be found here.
I suppose the next step would be to read these primary sources of law so that I can understand how it applies. Reading it for the sake of reading it is quite a boring exercise so what I am going to do is to summarise reported cases and find the relevant provisions that are breached.
またね！
Originally published at https://www.syafiqkay.com on September 15, 2021.
