Planning for the future

We often hear that the way pharmacy services are delivered will change significantly over the next five to ten years - but the pace of change was really brought home to me when I looked through the information about our proposed guidance on prescribing. Since 2016, the number of independent prescribers on our register has gone up by over 4,000 - which is more than double.

Although this is just a number, behind it are many pharmacy professionals taking on different job roles, working in multidisciplinary teams, in a greater variety of settings, and using new technology.

We want to make sure that we understand these changes and are able to respond to them - focusing more on proactively anticipating and responding to issues, and tailoring our responses to get results in the best and quickest way. To do this, we have begun work on a longer-term, ten-year vision and strategy.

As a first step, we need to understand more about how pharmacy professionals work now. To do this, we have commissioned Enventure, an independent research company to ask you to complete a survey about your role as a pharmacy professional as it is today.

This is the first time we have gathered data about the roles and responsibilities of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians since 2013, and we’re interested to see what has changed, and what hasn’t – we’re keen to share the results with you.

We want to get the most out of the information you give us, so we will also be sharing the same anonymised data we receive with other organisations who are responsible for workforce planning in all three countries of Great Britain.

I hope you’ll look out for an email survey invite in the coming weeks.  Your information will help us understand what pharmacy looks like now, and provide a sound basis for our future strategy.