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.

 Antimicrobial resistance
 Child health
 Consultation skills: face-to-face and remote
 Culturally competent person-centred care
 Digital healthcare
 Education
 Environmental sustainability
 Genomics
 Health and Justice pharmacy (prisons and secure environments)
 Leadership
 Learning disabilities
 Management
 Medication review
 Medicines reconciliation
 Older people
 Patient safety
 Pharmacy technicians
 Prescribing
 Primary care: general practice and care homes
 Repeat dispensing
 Research
 Return to practice
 Revalidation
 Safeguarding
 Sepsis
 Summary Care Records
 Transfer of care
 Urgent care

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.

 Acute coronary syndromes
 Anticoagulation
 Atrial fibrillation and arrhythmias
 Biochemistry
 Cancer
 Coronary heart disease: Stable angina
 Dementia
 Dermatology
 Diabetes (type 1)
 Diabetes (type 2)
 Epilepsy
 Gastrointestinal
 Glaucoma
 Gout
 Heart failure
 Hypercholesterolaemia
 Hypertension
 Infections
 Liver
 Mental health
 Minor ailments
 Musculoskeletal
 Neurology
 Nutrition, medicines and myths: evolution of pharmacy practice
 Osteoporosis
 Pain
 Palliative care
 Parkinson's disease
 Renal
 Respiratory
 Stroke and transient ischaemic attack
 Urinary incontinence and retention
 Venous thromboembolism and embolism

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.

 Alcohol
 Contraception
 Emergency hormonal contraception
 Health Checks
 Healthy Living Pharmacies
 Immunisation
 Menopause
 Men's Health
 Oral health
 Sexual health
 Smoking
 Substance misuse
 Weight management
 Women's Health

Learning programmes and assessments

Back to programme listings

e-course

Fundamentals of supporting older people to age well


  • Released: 03/2026
  • Reviewed: N/A
  • Study time: 14h:0m
  • Start date: Anytime
    •
Login to access

This online training course helps pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in supporting people to live and age well by delivering person centred care, applying the 5Ms of geriatric medicine and optimising treatments for older people. 

To facilitate your learning, we have structured the course into seven units. Some units are larger than others, but we estimate that you will need to commit an average of two hours of learning for each unit.

  • Unit 1 – Introduction 
  • Unit 2 – How the body changes as we age
  • Unit 3 – Matters most
  • Unit 4 – Mind
  • Unit 5 – Mobility 
  • Unit 6 – Medicines
  • Unit 7 – Multicomplexity

Learning outcomes

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

  • state the national context, legislation and policies to enable older people to live well  
  • explain the ageing process and how this can affect physical and mental health     
  • describe the impact of ageing on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and apply this knowledge to support the safer use of medicines in older people
  • explore your role as part of the multidisciplinary team in supporting older people including those living with multimorbidity, frailty and advanced illness
  • evaluate the risks and benefits of medicines with an older person using shared decision-making  
  • demonstrate a proactive approach to supporting people to age well based on what matters most to them.  

How to use this programme

We run our e-courses online in Canvas. After booking, if you have not used Canvas before you will be registered by CPPE and informed of your login details. This e-course is self-directed. This means that you can work through the course at a time and pace that suits you. In Canvas there will be a menu on the left for navigating through each area, so that you can access each unit and its content separately.

To activate your e-course booking you need to go to the e-course section of your Learning record and click "Course access information".

Learning intended for

  • Pharmacists
  • Pharmacy technicians
  • Trainee pharmacists