Thursday 5th September 2024

Due to popular demand, we at Community Pharmacy Devon have decided to review our communications and bring you a weekly digest that will provide a brief overview of weekly activity.

As always, if you have any feedback or comments, please contact us by email at admin@cpdevon.org.uk.

This week is Know your Numbers! week. There are teams out in the community raising awareness and conducting blood pressure readings all across Devon.

These will only be clinic readings however, so you may see an increase in ABPM queries over the coming weeks.

Our teams have been involved in a some of these events and this has prompted the public health teams to reach out to pharmacies for more support.

Asda at Bideford were contacted to stand up an event in the store with 2 days notice! Well Done team!

Vacancies have become available in:

• Barnstaple
• Torridge
• Mid Devon Healthcare
• West Devon

Expression of interest forms can be located here.

Expressions of interest to be sent into admin@CPDevon.org.uk  and the deadline is 19th September 2024

Pfizer has produced an A3 poster and a patient COVID action plan form to help pharmacies promote the Covid LFD service to customers. A number of pharmacies outside of our area have already found the summary of the eligibility criteria helpful for both pharmacy staff and customers.

A copy of the poster can be viewed here. If you would like a printed copy to display within your branch or a pad of the forms, then please contact Steven Hoare, Healthcare Partnership Manager, Pfizer Ltd, M: 07875279238 or email: steven.hoare@pfizer.com.

On 20th June 2024 the NPA held the first ever day of action across community pharmacy in support of the Save our Pharmacies campaign. This campaign was so successful, another day of action is being proposed on the 19th September 2024 to call for a fair deal across the sector.

Please see more information here and remember to show your support by sharing on the social media using the hashtag #saveourpharmacies.

We have designed a flyer for pharmacies to put into their Responsible Pharmacist Log for locums to sign up to our mailing list via the QR code on there. The aim is to ensure that locums are kept in the loop too with regards to training updates and other essential pharmacy-related news.

The flyer will be sent out to you all by email this week and if we could ask you to print a copy off and place in your Responsible Pharmacist Log folder, that would be great.

This is the third of a series of articles to tackle some of the misconceptions around Pharmacy First. The articles will cover a variety of aspects of Pharmacy First and aims to myth bust, to increase understanding of the service.

Patients who are electronically referred who have symptoms of a more serious illness/red flags should be rejected.

Wrong! If having spoken to the patient, you suspect the patient does not have a minor illness, but instead has a more serious condition/red flags are identified, this is still classed as a minor illness consultation and should be treated as such, instead of being rejected.

Appropriate action should be agreed with the patient such as the pharmacist arranging an urgent appointment with the patient’s GP, GP out of hours provider or a referral to the emergency department/999.

A 65 year old woman is eligible for an uncomplicated urinary tract infection clinical pathway consultation.

Wrong! The clinical pathway for uncomplicated urinary tract infection states that this is for women aged 16 to 64 years. Therefore, anyone aged 65 years or over is excluded from the clinical pathway.

It is acceptable for me to add a patient’s clinical record to the Pharmacy First IT system a week after I had the consultation with the patient.

Wrong! The requirements within the service specifications for the national community pharmacy clinical services expect pharmacy owners to adhere to defined standards of record keeping, ensuring that pharmacy professionals are making consultation records on the same day of service provision unless exceptional circumstances apply.

Making contemporaneous records at the time of the consultation is the expectation of pharmacy professionals providing services. This not only meets expected professional standards, but it also supports timely provision of data to the patient’s general practice, which will also become available to view by other pharmacy professionals providing a consultation to the patient, should they need to seek further support in due course.

In addition, the IT system suppliers have designed their consultation records to support the provision of the service and clinical decision making, for example, by linking to the Summary Care Record, blood pressure guide, etc. Therefore, pharmacy professionals are encouraged to use their IT system during the provision of services to ensure they have access to this clinical decision-making support.

View the first article on Pharmacy First myth busting

View the second article on Pharmacy First myth busting

If you have a positive news story to share with us please send it to admin@cpdevon.org.uk and it will be featured in an upcoming edition of the review. If featured, you will also win a surprise gift for you and your team up to the value of £25!

Click the name you need to email them directly: