Clinical pharmacists

COVID-19 pandemic

The Specialist Pharmacy Service has developed a Care Home Resource Hub to support pharmacy teams working into care homes in response to increased pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic, including a  collection of key training and education resources for pharmacists working with care homes and in primary care.

The COVID-19 Clinical Resources Hub from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has a collection of resources on upskilling during COVID-19. This includes a section for those working in primary care, support for pharmacy professionals who have been redeployed to the care home setting and advice on how to manage telephone and video consultations.

Read about the expanding role of pharmacists in general practice:

Work as a pharmacist  on the NHS Health Career website.

NHS England Clinical Pharmacists in General Practice pilot
The General Practice Forward View committed to over £100m of investment to support an extra 1,500 clinical pharmacists to work in general practice by 2020/21.
The Clinical Pharmacists working in General Practice scheme was launched as a pilot scheme in 2015 and closed in April 2019 with the introduction of the new GP Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service (DES) and the clinical pharmacist transferred to become part of a Primary Care Network’s workforce team from 1 July 2019 onwards.

The pilot scheme funded 89 applications from GP federations who recruited more than 490 pharmacists  to work across 658 GP practices.
An independent evaluation of the pilot over one year showed that pharmacists working in General Practice increase capacity in patient appointments either through direct face-to-face contact or releasing GP time by taking on tasks ordinarily done by GPs, contribute to improvements in medicines management and care of long-term conditions and promote safer prescribing. The full evaluation and executive summary (published July 2018) is available on the University of Nottingham’s website.

Learning resources

The Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education(CPPE) offers pharmacists and pharmacy technicians working in primary care and GP teams a range of clinical programmes. CPPE, along with Heath Education England, has also developed the Clinical pharmacists in general practice education pathway which aims to equip clinical pharmacists and senior clinical pharmacists with the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to work in general practice as part of a multidisciplinary team in a patient-facing role.

A series of programme funded through the Pharmacy Integration Fund and designed to help pharmacy professionals to provide more patient-centred care and embrace new ways of working as part of multidisciplinary healthcare teams in GP practices and care homes.

Mary Seacole Leadership Programme for pharmacy community – The CPPE are working in collaboration with the NHS Leadership Academy to offer the Mary Seacole Leadership Programme to pharmacists and pharmacy technicians working in community pharmacy. This six month NHS-led flagship programme is designed to develop leadership and management skills to enable improve the quality of services in community pharmacy and really make a difference to the health of the patients. See here  for the programme cohorts, dates of workshops, register onto the programme and access the application form.

The Consultation Skills for Pharmacy Practice website was created as part of a national training and development programme  in response to the Modernising Pharmacy Careers review, and provides a learning pathway as you develop and improve your patient consultation skills.

The Specialist Pharmacy Service (SPS) is commissioned and funded by NHS England, and includes a number of items of interest to pharmacists working in primary care including a guide for clinical pharmacists to resources for use in primary care to answer medicines-related questions. You can see all items relating to primary care here.

The Medicines Learning Portal from University of Southampton includes resources and expertise that will help pharmacists at the beginning of their careers to tackle the clinical problems that will confront them throughout their professional lives. The site is aimed at hospital pharmacists but it is freely available to NHS staff it includes tutorials which will be of interest to pharmacists working in general practice.

See also: CPD resources on Prescribing ; Prevention & Self Care (incl MECC)

The CPD Zone is brought to you by the GP schools of Health Education England working across Thames Valley and Wessex, in association with Oxford Health FT Library.​

Page last reviewed: 27 November, 2020