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.

Back to programme listings

online course

Musculoskeletal and chronic pain update: Primary care pathways


  • Released: 05/2020
  • Reviewed: N/A
  • Study time: 10h:0m

This online course is for pharmacists completing one of the following learning pathways: Clinical pharmacists in general practice education or Primary care pharmacy education pathways. You are only permitted to book and attend this online course if you are participating in one of these learning pathways.

This online course is delivered by Red Whale, one of the leading providers of primary care education in the UK.

More than one third of our consultations in primary care are about musculoskeletal problems and associated pain. After cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal problems account for the most missed days from work, disability and morbidity. Persistent pain is a huge challenge for clinicians and patients alike and the UK has not escaped the opiate prescribing epidemic. We know that many of you, as clinical pharmacists, are being asked to proactively start to address this issue. Red Whale want to help. The online course uses fully interactive lectures and case studies to address these issues.

Red Whale will provide your login for this online course. You will have access to the course for 12-months from the date that the course goes live. The course is divided into chapters so you can complete the course in any order and learn in bite sized chunks.

This programme is not openly available, please see the details above.

Learning outcomes

On completion of all aspects of this learning programme you should be able to:

  • assess pain, in the context of the whole biopsychosocial model and construct a clear narrative to discuss this with patients
  • identify patients at risk of developing persistent pain early in their journey and offer ideas of how to steer them away from this path
  • apply a strategy for identifying problem opiate prescribing and discuss how to address this
  • identify and manage patients with low back pain, osteoarthritis and inflammatory arthritis and involve them in shared decision making about their treatment.

Learning intended for

  • Pharmacists