Editor’s comment: Pharmacy’s bleak midwinter

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December is the most demanding month for the community pharmacy network. While many begin winding down for the festive break, pharmacy teams do the opposite, shouldering a surge in prescription numbers and delivering frontline NHS care at a time when the wider system feels the strain most acutely – not helped by the highest number of flu cases in years.

Millions of prescriptions are dispensed and numerous patient interventions carried out in the run-up to Christmas – and the trend is all one-way. Volumes continue to rise year on year, with workload intensifying even as staffing and funding challenges worsen on what seems like a daily basis. 

However, the headline numbers tell only part of the story. Every item dispensed, every Pharmacy First consultation, every moment spent reassuring a worried patient represents pressure absorbed elsewhere in the system. Pharmacy’s contribution is tangible and, frankly, disgracefully overlooked at the highest level.

Winter pressures are unavoidable. Yet it is pharmacy that consistently provides accessible, walk-in care when other parts of the system are stretched to their limits. Increasing numbers of pharmacist independent prescribers, especially in Wales and Scotland, are strengthening this offer further, bringing more clinical decision-making into the heart of communities.

Behind every pharmacy medicine counter stands a team whose professionalism and dedication keeps primary care moving. This December, as ever, they will be there for patients with unwavering commitment.

So, an end-of-year, admittedly downbeat, Christmas message from me. Community pharmacy is the cornerstone of the NHS. With proper support and investment, it can play an even greater role in keeping the nation well. But the network is staring into the abyss. The funding gap must be eliminated – urgently – before pharmacy closures spiral out of control and patient care is damaged irrevocably.