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.

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.