Community pharmacies must ensure each member of their team is given opportunities to ‘develop and feel empowered’ if the sector is to become a key part of the government’s plans for a Neighbourhood Health Service, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s (RPS) Tase Oputu has told Pharmacy Business.
The government announced earlier this month that community pharmacy will play a ‘vital role’ in its plan to transform the NHS as part of the 10 Year Plan..
The plan includes establishing new health centres as part of a Neighbourhood Health Service bringing a broader range of services under one roof.
Over the next five years, community pharmacy will transition from being focused largely on dispensing medicines to becoming integral to the Neighbourhood Health Service, offering more clinical services.
Speaking at a Pharmacy Business webinar on Skills Mix, Oputu, the English Pharmacy Board Chair and RPS Assembly, felt the 10 Year Plan puts community pharmacy at the ‘heart of the of healthcare for communities’.
“In terms of the services that are being asked for and delivered by pharmacy teams, these demands are going to increase so we need to ensure that each person is doing what they can to deliver on the practical side of the business of the pharmacy and also the clinical side,” said Oputu.
“That's what skills mix will help us to deliver, by making sure that people are doing the right things to the best of their ability, that they are developed and empowered to be able to deliver the best patient care.
“The pharmacy team is not just a pharmacist running the pharmacy. We have counter assistants, we have pharmacy technicians who are pharmacy professionals in their own right - each one has their own specific set of skills, they have their own qualifications, they have their scope of practice.”
Amy Laflin, vice president of the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK) spoke of a report released last week that gives pharmacy technicians a clear career pathway.
The Post-Registration Frameworks and Career Pathways: High-Level Research for Pharmacy Technicians, was commissioned by Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW).
It represents a significant step forward in the recognition, development, and strategic positioning of the pharmacy technician profession.
It provides an evidence-based foundation for shaping future career progression, post-registration development, and workforce planning—ensuring that pharmacy technicians are fully supported to meet the evolving needs of patients and healthcare systems.
“It outlines how we will support the journey of pharmacy technicians. We're looking at pillars of practice. Talking about frameworks for education on post registration that will enable pharmacy technicians to be able to continue to practice safely, but to be able to support those services that have historically been undertaken by pharmacists within the community pharmacy, but and within other sectors as well,” said Laflin.
Community pharmacy continues to be hamstrung by a lack of funding but Victoria Steele, former superintendent at Lloyds Pharmacy and founder of Steelier, believes that having a team with a high level of skills mix is the ‘holy grail’ in providing clinical services.
“You can't afford not train your team,” she said.
“There is a financial pressure. There is time pressure as well because training staff takes time, whoever you put in charge of your training, whether that is you (pharmacist) or a member of your team, but for you to be able to achieve your goals, you need to go through some level of discomfort to get to kind of the holy grail, as you say.
“But I wouldn't just be thinking about clinical training, I'd also be thinking about management training because if you can do some management training with appropriate people in your team, then that takes an enormous amount of admin pressure off the pharmacist.
“It's a constant thought process about how you're supporting and empowering your teams.”
Amerjit Singh has been a pharmacy Contractor for over 25 years and is the founder of Skills4Pharmacy founder, one of the largest training providers in the UK.
He told delegates that community pharmacists ‘should not be doing the vast majority of tasks’ and should look at GPs and dentists in how to train and upskill members of their teams.
“If you go into any general practice, or if you go to any of our friends in the world of dentistry, the senior dentist, or any of the dentists will not be doing the tasks that they did 10 years ago. A scale and polish, for example,10-15, years ago, the dentist used to do it but not anymore. Now an appropriately trained individual does this task,” said Singh.
"Pharmacists now have to look at what's out there and target the higher bearing fruit. But we should never forget about the core responsibility that the community expects upon us in terms of the amazingly important job of dispensing.
“You've got to structure your business. The pharmacist needs to be something akin to the GPs who probably do maybe 10-12 per cent of all the tasks in their business. Pharmacists need to start doing the same. They need to trust their teams. They need to invest in their teams.”
Cyrus Hodivala, managing director at Meditech UK & Ireland and owner of Cristal Pharmacy, believes it is critical community pharmacies looked at their individual communities and addressed services needs.
“You need to be able to have service provision but you also need to align it with the demand in that community and make sure that you have the right services for that community,” he said.
“It’s important to assess where your skill gaps are with your current technicians and with your counter staff and see where you can upskill them to start to provide these services.
“We underestimate what our technicians and counter staff are capable of. You just need to give them the tools to do the job, the training to do the job. We've seen it in our own pharmacy - we've gone from doing zero services, when we bought the pharmacy just over a year ago, to a full service provision, and that's only growing, and that's down to engaging with our staff for making sure that they are part of the team moving forward.”
Watch the full webinar - Webinar On-Demand Library | Pharmacy Business
