Healthwatch – April 2024
Report, based on a national poll and interviews of pharmacy users and staff found 72% of the public had used a community pharmacy in the past 3 months, and that accessibility is valued in terms of ease & speed of being seen. It notes positive signs for success of Pharmacy First
Royal Pharmaceutical Society – October 2023
These professional standards for pharmacy services for virtual wards aim to ensure the delivery of high-quality care and optimal outcomes for individuals in the ‘hospital at home’ setting. These standards serve as a practical framework to assure and enhance established hospital-at-home pharmacy services, support the NHS recovery, and drive community and urgent and emergency care reforms
Further information – Interim professional standards for hospital at home, including virtual wards, pharmacy services
NHS England – 27th September 2023
The Pharmacy Workforce Race Equality Standard sets out to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in pharmacy teams in the NHS. This report provides the first national overview of the varied experiences that registered pharmacy professionals and wider team members in NHS trusts face.
Department of Health and Social Care – 18th August 2023
This consultation seeks views on the proposal to enable registered pharmacy technicians to supply and administer medicines under a patient group direction (PGD).
It is the ambition of NHS systems across the United Kingdom to maximise the use of the skill mix in pharmacy teams, enabling them to meet more of the health needs of their local populations. By utilising the skills of the whole pharmacy team, pharmacists in community pharmacy will be enabled to deliver more patient-facing clinical services, improving access to care for patients and releasing capacity in the wider NHS. Across other clinical settings this proposal will enable registered pharmacy technicians to maximise the contribution they make within multi-professional teams through more effective use of their unique skills and expertise.
This proposal is supported by all 4 nations across the UK where the future ambitions for the pharmacy technician profession are addressed in the documents below:
Proposal for the use of patient group directions by pharmacy technicians
Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy / https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2023.100249
Quality Improvement (QI) is any systematic process that seeks to improve patient safety or clinical effectiveness in healthcare. Although hospital pharmacists positively contribute to QI initiatives, there is no information available regarding Canadian hospital pharmacists’ involvement and perspectives with QI.
The primary objective of the study was to describe the QI experiences (including attitudes, enablers and barriers) of hospital pharmacists employed by the Lower Mainland Pharmacy Services (LMPS) in British Columbia.
This research study used an exploratory cross-sectional survey. A 30-item survey was developed to measure QI experiences of hospital pharmacists including prior QI experiences, their attitudes towards pursuing QI initiatives, and their perceived enablers and barriers to participating in QI initiatives in hospital settings.
Forty-one pharmacists responded (response rate of 14%). Thirty-eight participants (93%) indicated that they were familiar with the concept of QI. All participants (100%) reported that it was important for pharmacists to be involved with QI despite the general lack of formal QI training among the participants, and 40 participants (98%) agreed that QI was necessary to advance patient care. Moreover, 21 participants (51%) showed interest in leading QI initiatives, while 29 (71%) would participate in QI initiatives. Participants identified several individual and organizational barriers that hindered hospital pharmacists from pursuing QI initiatives.
Our findings suggest that hospital pharmacists in LMPS would like to be actively involved with QI initiatives; however, individual and organizational barriers must be addressed in order to facilitate widespread adoption of QI practices…
National Voices – 2023
On 12 October 2022, National Voices convened a group of its members and lived experience partners on behalf of the National Pharmacy Association to discuss the future role of community pharmacy within primary care and more widely. Topics discussed included the potential for community pharmacists to offer more services, continuity of care, digital approaches to service delivery, and the issue of trust.
Read the briefing – A summary of discussions in National Voices’ roundtable on the future of community pharmacy on behalf of the National Pharmacy Association
People with minor illnesses or who need medicine urgently have been referred to local pharmacies, relieving pressure on doctors | Department of Health and Social Care
The Department of Health and Social Care has issued information relating to the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service which was introduced in October 2019. The service enables NHS 111 health advisers to refer patients with minor illnesses to their local pharmacy for assessment and treatment. More than 100,000 patients have had appointments with expert pharmacists in the last 10 weeks.
Further detail at Department of Health and Social Care
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has published Using pharmacists to help improve care for people with type 2 diabetes. This document is aimed at policy makers and education/service commissioners within the NHS in England and makes recommendations for how pharmacists can play an increasing role in the prevention, early detection, care and support of people with type 2 diabetes.
To improve care for people with type 2 diabetes, the RPS are calling for:
Full detail at Royal Pharmaceutical Society
See also: Pharmacists must be integrated into diabetes care | RPS press release
Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee has launched a video animation explaining how community pharmacies are likely to fit into the NHS of the future
As well as showcasing the work that pharmacies already do, the video describes the transformation that community pharmacies will need to undertake over the coming months and years. The video was based on the ambitions for community pharmacy that have been set out by NHS England and the government.
Full detail: Future of pharmacy: an animation
The government has announced how it will take tougher action on fraud and save hundreds of millions of pounds for the NHS over the next 5 years, increasing the money available for improving patient care | Department of Health and Social Care
The new approach will start with a commitment to halve prescription fraud, which costs the NHS £256 million a year. Prescription exemptions will be digitised, allowing pharmacies to check whether the patient does not have to pay charge before their medication is dispensed. 
This will be piloted next year, before being rolled out across the NHS. The focus on prescriptions is one aspect of a wider crackdown on NHS fraud, which will prevent up to £300 million being lost to fraud by April 2020.
Further measures being introduced to stop fraud include:
Full detail at Department of Health and Social Care
Quality Improvement News 