Dear Mr Burt,

Congratulations on your appointment as Minister of State for Community and Social Care at the Department of Health, a role that brings with it responsibility for pharmacy.

We appreciate that you are new to health – although your legal training will undoubtedly come in useful – and so, to bring you up to speed, we have compiled a list of some of the issues currently affecting community pharmacy that we feel you should prioritise:

Funding

We appreciate that nobody likes to talk about money and pharmacists are certainly far less vocal on the topic than, say, general practice – but pharmacy is feeling the pinch. We know there is not an infinite amount of money in the NHS pot, but pharmacists are not afraid of hard work – so please make commissioning fairer and more inclusive.

Services

Pharmacists are experts on medicines and community pharmacists are also extremely well versed in managing common conditions, both minor and long-term. Yet, too often, their role is viewed as simply counting tablets. There is so much more they could do – so let them.

More national services would be desirable – perhaps that minor ailments scheme that keeps getting talked about could finally come to fruition, for example – but as a short-term measure we’ll take a removal of the restrictions on medicines use reviews and NMS interventions, in terms of both number and therapy area.

Prescribing

A cohort of pharmacists can prescribe and many more want to, but all too often there are no budgets for them to undertake the course or opportunities to put their prescribing skills to good use. Pharmacists understand medicines and medical devices like no other profession, so this is truly missing a trick that could deliver value for money, enable better use of the NHS’s precious resources and, vitally, improve patient outcomes.

Representation

Community pharmacies significantly outnumber GP practices, yet pharmacy is hugely underrepresented at strategic and commissioning level. The ideal would be a place on clinical commissioning groups or health and wellbeing boards. Pharmacists are certainly prepared to work more closely with local authorities involved in public health – assuming they get assurances that their opinions and ideas will be listened to and valued – while they wait for that to happen. Public health services should be key for pharmacy.

Education

It is absolutely right that training courses for pharmacy support staff are mandatory, yet the course syllabuses have not been updated for years, and the individuals are not regulated in the same way as pharmacists and technicians, so are not subject to ongoing learning requirements. A decade of Which? reports indicates that these changes are desperately needed to upskill the frontline of healthcare.

Continuing professional development

One of the unique points about community pharmacy is its opening hours. This means that long after other primary care providers have shut up shop, there is a healthcare professional available for anyone to see with no appointment necessary. There are few roles in which it is so important to be completely up-to-date – so protected learning time should be a given, not a negotiation.

Stock shortages

This is one area in which community pharmacy feels your predecessor really let down the sector. Despite the Government claiming it has tackled the issue, it is still very much alive and kicking, adversely affecting patients in terms of not being able to get the medicines they need and depriving them of the time and attention of pharmacists and their staff, who are spending hours trying to obtain supplies. It needs sorting out. Urgently.

There are many other burning issues, but we hope this gives you some insight into a sector of healthcare that has more interactions with the public than any other. Please do pop into any pharmacy and see for yourself the quality care that is on offer. Feel free to introduce yourself and hear what pharmacy teams have to say (you may recognise some of their concerns from this letter).

Good luck in your new role and we look forward to seeing you make an impact.

Pharmacy Magazine, London