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
 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
 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. 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.

 Acute coronary syndromes
 Anticoagulation
 Atrial fibrillation and arrhythmias
 Biochemistry
 Cancer
 Coronary heart disease: Stable angina
New
 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

Focusing on clinical pharmacy and therapeutics

British National Formulary

The BNF provides UK healthcare professionals with authoritative and practical information on the selection and clinical use of medicines. It is available online and as an app. There are two online versions:

  • the BNF and BNF for children (BNFc) are freely accessible via the NICE website
  • the version on MedicinesComplete is available to UK-based individuals working for, or on behalf of, the NHS. You can access the BNF and BNFc free of charge using your NHSOpenAthens login details. Depending on the subscriptions held by your organisation, you may have access to other resources via the MedicinesComplete website.

You can access the combined BNF/BNFC app on the App Store or Google Play, which is also freely accessible to all users and no longer requires an NHSOpenAthens password to download the content. 

Keeping up to date

You can keep up to date with changes in pharmacy, medicines and the NHS by taking part in our regular e-challenge quiz. You'll find questions on a range of topics, such as pharmacy services, new medicines, legal issues, ethical concerns and recently released reports and research. 

You can also sign up to receive a notification each time we publish a new e-challenge quiz by updating you email preferences in your profile.