Pharmacy Voice and PSNC are encouraging pharmacy teams to ensure their constituency candidates visit a local pharmacy in the run-up to the general election.

“Most candidates are out on the streets of their constituencies every day now that Parliament has been dissolved,” says Claire Ward, chair of Pharmacy Voice. “This means there are more opportunities to encourage a visit to your pharmacy to share the community pharmacy manifesto and highlight local issues. It is important to continue raising awareness of community pharmacy as an under-used resource which must become more prominent in the next Parliament.”

The 2015 Community Pharmacy Manifesto, launched by the Parliamentary All-Party Pharmacy Group, calls for politicians to sign up to five key pledges:

1. Encourage patients to think ‘pharmacy first’ and use pharmacy to help relieve pressure on GPs and emergency departments
2. Improve patient choice and healthcare by making it easier to commission pharmacy services and backing more national services
3. Help improve the public’s health, recognising the accessibility and support community pharmacy can provide
4. Enable patients, especially those with long-term conditions, to get more from their medicines through better use of community pharmacy
5. Help pharmacies to get access to the records, information and support they need to provide more effective and safer care to patients.

A toolkit with a template letter and guidance on identifying and liaising with prospective candidates can be found on the pharmacymanifesto.com website.