Thursday 21st August 2025   

Welcome to your weekly injection of local and national pharmacy news. As always, if you have any feedback or comments, please contact us by email at admin@cpdevon.org.uk.

NHS England have announced that they have funded CPPE to offer the Accuracy checking pharmacy technician (ACPT) programme for pharmacy technicians working in community pharmacy, NHS hospitals, and in health and justice for 2025 / 2026.

A total of 240 NHS England-funded places are available and funding will end when all 240 places have been allocated or by the end of March 2026.

The ACPT programme is a 3-12-month training and development programme available to pharmacy technicians, with employer support. The course is designed to support pharmacy technicians in meeting a range of competencies during their training in order to deliver safe and effective patient care.

The scope of the programme is to train and assess pharmacy technicians, working in community pharmacy, health and justice and NHS hospitals, to perform the final accuracy check of dispensed items on prescriptions that have been clinically screened/ approved by a pharmacist.

The ACPT programme is open to any pharmacy technician in England, from any sector, who provide NHS services and who qualified pre-2017 GPhC Initial Education & Training Standards. Those who have train on the current standards, receive the knowledge and competencies required to carry out a final accuracy check.

Self-funded places will remain available for pharmacy technicians who do not work in community pharmacy, health and justice or in an NHS hospital for a cost of £330 including VAT.

For more information, including further eligibility criteria, please visit: https://www.cppe.ac.uk/career/acpt

Smoking Cessation and Health (SCAH) are holding a free promotional six-part webinar series titled Conversations to Cessation (C2C). This series is designed to deepen your knowledge of smoking cessation through nicotine-free alternative therapies. Whether you are a stop smoking advisor, a prescriber in primary or secondary care, or involved with Patient Group Directions (PGDs), these webinars may help strengthen your practice.

Led by expert speakers Martin Lever (Smoking Cessation & Health Conference Joint Lead Convenor) and Heidi Croucher (Founder & Lead Convenor of SCAH), the series offers valuable insights into innovative approaches to treating tobacco dependence, with the goal of improving patient outcomes and transforming clinical practices.

Don't miss this opportunity to update your knowledge on smoking cessation, to attain attendance certificates and engage directly with leading experts. Register for the sessions that are suitable for your role or feel free to join them all. You can book a place here.

You can view the latest Waythrough bulletin for pharmacy teams providing services in the Devon area here and their factsheet on what to do if a person prescribed Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) misses a dose here.

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: