NHS priorities

Whether it’s to prepare for the next Pharmacy Quality Scheme deadline, or to increase your confidence in helping people with a learning disability, this section provides topic-specific pages that link to current NHS priorities. This section will support you in keeping your knowledge and skills up to date in order to provide high-quality pharmacy services and be service-ready.

Clinical pharmacy

Our clinical portfolio is expanding on a frequent basis, helping you to advance your knowledge and skills and deliver medicines optimisation in practice for all sectors of pharmacy. From two new focal points a year to our small group learning for hospital pharmacists – Optimise – this section focuses on clinical pharmacy, diseases and therapeutics.

Public health

The public health agenda is embedded in pharmacy, yet topics such as emergency contraception or stop smoking support are as prevalent as ever. As well as our public health workshops, use this section to access a wide range of resources to assure and maintain your competence, all underpinned by the Declaration of Competence system.

Primary care pharmacy education pathway

Clinical supervisors for the Primary care pharmacy education pathway

The Primary care pharmacy education pathway is for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians employed as part of the NHS England primary care Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service (DES) additional roles reimbursement scheme.

The PCN DES requires that all clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians will be part of a professional clinical network and will always be clinically supervised by a senior clinical pharmacist and GP clinical supervisor (pharmacy technicians can have a pharmacist supervisor see next paragraph).

The clinical supervisor for pharmacists will usually be a GP but if the pharmacist works in a care home, the clinical supervisor could be a consultant geriatrician. A pharmacist with experience of working in general practice or care homes should be the clinical supervisor for a pharmacy technician.

Refer to the following table:
Pharmacy professional Clinical supervisor required
Pharmacist working GP practice and/or care homes GP or other medic e.g., consultant community geriatrician for pharmacists working solely in care homes to provide the equivalent of one session (four hours) of supervision per month either in one session or broken down weekly or fortnightly depending on the need of the pharmacist.
Pharmacy technician working in a GP practice and/or care home Pharmacist with experience of the work that the pharmacy technician will be doing (or a GP if a pharmacist is not available) to provide the equivalent of one session (four hours) of supervision per month either in one session or broken down weekly or fortnightly depending on the need of the pharmacy technician.

The PCN DES also requires that the following supervision must be in place for clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians:

  • Each pharmacy professional will receive a minimum of one supervision session per month by a senior clinical pharmacist.
  • The senior clinical pharmacist will receive a minimum of one supervision session every three months by a GP clinical supervisor.
  • All pharmacy professionals will have access to an assigned GP clinical supervisor for support and development.
  • As the number of pharmacy professionals working within PCNs increases, there should be a ratio of one senior clinical pharmacist to five clinical pharmacists, and in all cases appropriate peer support and supervision must be in place for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

Training for clinical supervisors

CPPE provides training for clinical supervisors who are supervising pharmacy professionals on the CPPE Primary care pharmacy education pathway. This training consists of two online workshops webinars. Each workshop is 90 minutes and alternate between running in the evenings or at lunchtimes. Specific outlines of each workshop can be found on the booking page of the workshop.

To book your place please follow the links below:

If you are not a pharmacy professional you will need to register with the CPPE website before you can book your place on a workshop or webinar. Go to the registration page, click on register and follow the instructions to create an ‘other’ account.

E-workshops:

If you choose to attend the online training you must attend both e-workshops 1 and 2. You will need to book these e-workshops via the CPPE website. Please book both e-workshops separately. You need to use the keycode CSW2020 to book your place. You must have either attended or watched a recording of the first e-workshop before attending the second. The second e-workshop must be attended live. If you have any queries please email emma.wright@cppe.ac.uk

Clinical supervisor training for CPPE national training pathways e-workshop webinar 1
www.cppe.ac.uk/programmes/l/mochcstr-ew-01

Clinical supervisor training for CPPE national training pathways e-workshop webinar 2
https://www.cppe.ac.uk/programmes/l/mochcstr-ew-02

The Clinical supervisor self-assessment form is for all clinical supervisors overseeing the progress of pharmacy professionals on a CPPE national training pathway. This form enables clinical supervisors to self-assess their suitability for this role, working through the statements in the form and accessing the links, if necessary, to update their knowledge. This form is for local use only and does not need to be submitted to CPPE.

Resources for clinical supervisors

Handbooks:

For more detailed information refer to the pathway and role progression handbook and the clinical supervisor handbook. You can find these on the handbooks page of our website here.

FAQs:

We have created an FAQ document to provide answers to the most frequently asked questions from employers about the Primary care pharmacy education pathway.

Newsletter:

Our regular newsletter keeps you up to date with the education pathway. You can find copies of recent newsletters here.

Mailing list:

We want to be able to communicate in a timely manner with clinical supervisors and employers, so we encourage all clinical supervisors and line managers of the PCN pharmacy professionals to subscribe to our email distribution list. To subscribe, email: listserv@listserv.manchester.ac.uk from the email address you want to subscribe from with the words Subscribe CPPE-PC-SUPERVISOR in the body of the email.

If you have any further questions please contact primarycare@cppe.ac.uk