Editor’s comment: Failure to launch?

It was welcome news last month when it was confirmed that discussions about a national prescribing service would form part of the pharmacy contract negotiations for England in 2026/27. And not before time as again, England is lagging way behind Scotland, where pharmacist independent prescribers have been active for five years as part of Pharmacy First Plus. This service is now available in around one-third of pharmacies north of the border.

Compare this to England, where the withdrawal of funding from many independent prescribing pathfinder sites has left a trail of disillusioned, previously enthusiastic, pharmacist prescribers in its wake. A prescribing service must be a priority, but even if a funding agreement is reached, many challenges exist to get it off the ground. It surely won’t happen any time soon.

However, it would be unthinkable and totally demoralising if the new cohort of pharmacists who are registering this year in England with a prescribing qualification (assuming they all found a DPP, which is another story) are unable to use it in community pharmacy.

What is more worrying, as you can read on our front page, is that the Nuffield Trust has also warned that lack of access to support and supervision could undermine their ability to prescribe safely and confidently.

Could a serious failure to prepare shatter the long anticipated ambitions of the wider profession and the hope that this represents? Indeed, could it potentially lead to a brain drain from community pharmacy as these new fresh and keen pharmacists are siphoned off to more appealing roles where they can make full use of their skills and qualifications?

I really hope not.