Managing concerns about pharmacy professionals: our strategy for change

27 July 2021

This month we published our new five-year strategy for how we will manage concerns about pharmacy professionals

Our governing council agreed the finalised strategy in their meeting in June, following our recent consultation.

Overall, the consultation feedback we received supported our intention to move away from an approach that can, at times, be adversarial and slow, and can often have an unintended adverse impact on the mental health and wellbeing of people involved. You can read the feedback we received in our consultation report.

Our new strategy outlines how we will take action to protect patients when needed, while at the same time promoting and encouraging a learning culture that allows pharmacy professionals to deal with any concerns and go back to practising in appropriate circumstances.

We are currently working on an implementation plan, which we plan to publish in Autumn 2021.

The plan will set out the practical steps we will take to improve how we manage concerns about pharmacy professionals, to help us to achieve our Vision 2030. It will also cover how we intend to identify where there may be wider system failures that have contributed to things going wrong, which we need to work with others to address.

We would like to thank all the many individuals who participated in shaping this strategy and in helping to make it as relevant as possible. We are grateful for your input and look forward to working to implement the strategy to ensure patients and the public receive better protection while being fair to pharmacy professionals.