Community Pharmacy Workforce Development

The Role of Community Pharmacy in Urgent Care

Since 2015 a multi-stage scoping exercise has been undertaken across Kent Surrey and Sussex to investigate community pharmacy involvement in Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC), provide insight into what pharmacists are currently doing to support the UEC agenda and determine what future training requirements would facilitate the optimisation of urgent care management in this setting. The results of this can be seen in the full report and executive summary below.

Following the report findings, a 3-day programme of training to cover assessment and consultation skills for 120 community pharmacists was procured. The course was over-subscribed, and a full evaluation of the training and the experience of the participants when back in practice can be found below

Community Pharmacy

Health Champions

A successful programme of recruitment in South London has so far trained over 800 frontline pharmacy staff to be Health Champions. This network is helping to deliver and support public health initiatives within the local population; more information can be found on the South London Health Champions website

A similar programme to train Health Champions in the KSS geography has trained over 600 staff members. 
It is hoped that these Champions will form local networks to collectively deliver public health messages to their populations, providing a unified message and highlighting the role of pharmacy as the first port of call for patients seeking healthcare help and advice. A website to aid this process is currently in development.

The experiences of those becoming Health Champions pre, immediately post and then three months post training have been captured in an evaluation that is helping to inform next steps in supporting our community pharmacy workforce. The full report can be found below.     

Healthy Living Pharmacy Evaluation

Based on the recommendations highlighted in the Health Champion 2017 report, a follow-up short programme was designed to support the Healthy Living Pharmacy (HLP) concept. The programme was developed to help senior pharmacy staff prepare a collective team approach to motivating, empowering and supporting effective delivery of clinically led pharmacy services and identifying opportunities for integration into the local healthcare system, with a focus on effectively utilising HLP concepts and staff to achieve this aim.

Community Pharmacy Workforce mapping

Health Education England commissioned a national Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey for 2017 to better understand the current numbers and skill mix in the community pharmacy workforce, and thus inform planning and future investment in education. The survey was first piloted in Kent, Surrey and Sussex in 2014, and further surveys were carried out in both Thames Valley and London regions in 2015. Health Education England decided to complete data collection for the rest of England in 2017. Full reports for the KSS 2014 survey and the 2017 national survey can be found below

A further report analysing workforce trends between the 2014 and 2017 review points in Kent Surrey and Sussex, containing outcomes from a focus group discussion between community pharmacy stakeholders, can be found below

The full raw dataset from the national 2017 survey, breaking down the workforce per CCG, can be found below