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.

Pharmacy Quality Scheme

Home Medicines optimisation Patient safety

The Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) forms part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF). The 2025/2026 PQS rewards community pharmacy contractors that deliver quality criteria in two quality domains: medicines optimisation and patient safety.

CPPE offer learning and assessments to support you in achieving criteria relating to the medicines optimisation and patient safety domains in the 2025/2026 version of the scheme.

The 2025/2026 PQS includes a stipulation that may require staff to repeat previously completed training and e-assessments. This will depend on the stated validity period and completion dates.

Our PQS tracker can help you quickly determine which of our learning programmes and assessments you have completed within the specified timeframe (if applicable).

Please note that the tracker is only a guide. Read our Medicines optimisation and Patient safety pages to learn more about the steps you need to take to work towards meeting the training requirements for the quality criteria across the domains. To determine the learning requirements specific to your circumstances and role, refer to the Drug Tariff information on PQS.

Before you start the learning and assessment listed under the different domains, you may wish to access the PQS information in the Drug Tariff which explains the gateway criteria and the quality criteria included in the different domains.

You can find more support and resources on the Community Pharmacy England PQS Hub page