Supervision of professional activity by pharmacists is a topic that raises strong feelings within the profession. Current practice around supervision guarantees the universal availability of professional advice from a pharmacist in a community pharmacy - one of the unique benefits that pharmacy offers the public. It is widely believed that any changes to the current supervision regulations should only be considered if they could enable more efficient practice and reduce pressure on the pharmacist’s time whilst still maintaining patient safety.

Lindsey Gilpin, English Pharmacy Board chair comments:

"Today we are sharing the overarching principles, which we believe should shape the supervision models of the future, with the profession – and we want to hear what you think. Often the profession has to react quickly to consultations by Government before we have time to think through the consequences. I am determined that will not happen with supervision. We will be answering the question about the future of supervision before the question is asked – shaping our own destiny and making sure we have a clear consensus within pharmacy as to how we would like supervision to be organised in the future."

As a starting point we have put together principles which we believe could shape the future of the profession, but it is for the profession to decide whether these are in accord with its wishes. The principles are:

• Patients and the public have a right to access medicines (including POMs, Ps and GSLs), quality assured medicines information and pharmaceutical services
• Patient safety and wellbeing is paramount and this needs to be ensured via quality systems and processes
• Patients should have their medicines supply overseen by a pharmacist and they should have a right to counselling about their medicines
• Patients have a right to expect that a pharmacist will perform a professional check on every prescription dispensed
• The need and respect for the pharmacy profession must be protected
• Any changes to supervision should not lead to an increase in risk and any changes in workload must be at an acceptable level for the profession
• A pharmacist can only be responsible for one pharmacy at any one time.
• Supervision models may differ in different settings but there must be adequate staffing levels to deliver the services required

Lindsey adds:

"We will begin today a programme of activity to engage the profession in debate about the future of supervision. This will include face to face and virtual meetings at Local Practice Forums, webinars and articles in the professional press describing how the principles would be applied in practice. We will be holding a session at the RPS conference for members and intend to hold an event and meet with those in and outside pharmacy to discuss the topic before presenting the consensus view back to the profession in the autumn for the approval of members."

Any LPF who wishes to hold a supervision webinar should contact Heidi Wright. To find out if and when your LPF is running a meeting or webinar on Supervision please look at your LPF virtual network.