Thursday 18th September 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.

There will be times when a pharmacist will need additional advice or will need to escalate a patient to a higher acuity care location (e.g., a GP, UTC or ED). Pharmacists should use their clinical judgement to decide the urgency, route and need for referral and then choose one of the options below:

Option A – Refer the patient for an urgent in-hours appointment with their own GP. After agreeing this course of action with the patient, the pharmacist should contact the patient’s general practice to secure them an appointment.

Option B – Call the NHS 111 service when the patient’s own general practice is not available. The pharmacist should call NHS 111 using the healthcare professionals’ line for access to a clinician, to seek advice.

Option C – Signpost the patient to A&E or call 999. If the patient presents with severe symptoms indicating the need for an immediate medical consultation, the pharmacist should tell the patient to attend A&E immediately or call an ambulance on behalf of the patient.

All this information can be found in the service specification.

Do you know that a Trivalent vaccine is being used this year? It targets three strains; two influenza A strains and one influenza B strain.

Do you know that if you want your team to be vaccinated then the pharmacy must pay for them unless an individual is registered for a free NHS one?

Do you know that you must have a DBS certificate if you are vaccinating in a person's home or in a care home?

Sign up for the FREE course here.

Discover what happens to your prescriptions once you have submitted them and how accounts are received and prepared for our scanning process. We will then explain prescription processing and include some Hints and Tips on the important subjects before finishing the session with time for any questions you may have for us.

Key learnings

• Discover what happens to your monthly submission and how it is processed.
• Why correct endorsing is important
• Reducing and submitting referred back prescription.
• FP34C: how to access these documents and chase up queries etc

Expert speakers from NHSBSA

Mark Gibbon - Business Engagement Lead

Philip Edwards - Head of Pharmaceutical Services and Principal Pharmacist

Date: 30th September 2025

Time: 19.30

You can book a place here, please note that Non NPA members can register by entering 5x 3s (33333) in the Membership no. column when registering for the event. 

A reminder that, from October 2025, the requirement for the threshold payment will increase to require pharmacy owners to deliver one ABPM consultation per month.

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!

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