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.

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e-course

Substance use and misuse


  • Released: 07/2021
  • Reviewed: 03/2024
  • Study time: 12h:0m
  • Start date: Anytime

The aim of this e-course is to support pharmacy professionals to provide a person-centred approach to care for people who use and misuse substances.

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

  • Unit 1 – Individual experience of substance use and misuse
  • Unit 2 – Risks and challenges of substance use and misuse and associated harm reduction services
  • Unit 3 – Recovery and treatment
  • Unit 4 – Delivering holistic and seamless care

Learning outcomes

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

  • explain why people misuse substances and the impact it has on their lives and the lives of those around them
  • identify the risks associated with substance use and misuse
  • apply the principles of harm reduction to your practice when sharing information and providing commissioned pharmacy services for substance misuse
  • describe the actions you can take to support a person’s substance misuse recovery and treatment journey
  • identify the substance misuse multidisciplinary team in your local area and how you can work together to support people with problematic substance use
  • demonstrate a holistic, person-centred approach to the care of different groups of people who use or misuse substances
  • support and develop your pharmacy team to provide safe, effective, and holistic substance misuse services.

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.

Learning intended for

  • Pharmacists
  • Pharmacy technicians
  • Trainee pharmacists