Thursday 20th November 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.

Since 2022, it has been a Terms of Service requirement for pharmacy owners to complete an annual NHS England community pharmacy workforce survey.

The data from the survey is intended to provide the NHS, policymakers and other stakeholders with a picture of the current workforce to:

• understand capacity and challenges;
• guide workforce planning; and
• inform education and training decisions.

The deadline to complete the 2025 Workforce survey is by the end of the day on the 21st November.

This is a mandatory requirement for all pharmacy owners.

Novo Nordisk plan to release a new formulation of Rybelsus® tablets with a higher bioavailability than the old formulation, so patients MAY be switched to the corresponding lower strength before the end of the year. There is a significant risk of error due to the old and new formulations being available at the same time until the end of the year. 

Torbay council will be sharing information on Pharmoutcomes for you and pharmacy teams to read. This information relates a cluster of serious Group A Streptococcal (GAS) infections in the Torbay area, particularly among people who inject drugs, those who are homeless, and current or former prisoners. Several patients have required hospital admission due to invasive disease.

Key actions for clinical teams:

1. Be alert to symptoms in high-risk groups:

• People who inject drugs
• Homeless individuals
• Current or former prisoners

2. Recognise the following symptoms:

• Mild symptoms: sore throat, impetigo, or other skin infections
• Invasive disease: high fever, severe muscle pain or tenderness, redness or swelling around wounds

3. If you suspect Group A Strep in a high-risk group advise the following:

• Seeking swabbing
  • A throat swab if no obvious infection is present
  • Wound or skin swabs for soft tissue infections
  • Important that swabs are labelled with CIMS ref: 200928659 to ensure appropriate testing
• If sepsis is suspected, seek urgent hospital admission and take blood cultures

Why this matters: People who inject drugs (PWID) and the homeless population are known to be at significantly higher risk of invasive group A Strep, and the proportion of invasive group A Strep cases who are PWID has been increasing nationally over several years.

Public health response: The South West Health Protection Team is investigating outbreaks in prison and homeless communities. Your clinical vigilance is essential to identifying and managing cases early.

Winter can be an especially difficult time for people with lung conditions. They can end up seriously unwell over winter as seasonal triggers like cold air, colds and flu and damp and mould make it harder to breathe. In fact, the risk of needing to attend A&E doubles compared with other times of the year.

That’s why Asthma + Lung UK are launching their winter campaign – "With You This Winter"

Our Winter Wellbeing Guide is a free, tailored email series designed to help people with lung conditions stay well during the colder months.

By answering a few short questions about their condition and how winter affects their symptoms, patients will receive personalised health advice straight to their inbox from their in-house GP, Dr Andy Whittamore.

The daily emails help patients:

• Understand what’s triggering their symptoms over winter

• Learn why these triggers can make their condition worse

• Get practical, personalised tips to protect their lungs and stay well

• Discover simple ways to look after their overall wellbeing

Signposting your patients to the Winter Wellbeing Guide can help them stay well, and help to ease winter pressures on services too, reducing the risk of winter flare-ups and emergency visits.

You can learn more about the campaign here.

OST provides individuals with stability and relief from withdrawal symptoms, and reduces reliance on street drugs, however, estimates suggest only about half of people who may benefit from OST are receiving it in England.

Stigma is cited as a key barrier to services. People who are prescribed OST often have to attend a pharmacy daily and, at least at first, are usually supervised consuming their dose. Pharmacy staff therefore see the person regularly, yet have often received little training in how to interact with people in receipt of OST, many of whom have experienced trauma and exclusion. To maximise engagement and retention in OST, it is vital that interventions are developed which address the stigma that people who receive OST experience, including that experienced in pharmacies.

A really useful resource for assisting Community Pharmacy with this is available from the Centre for Academic Primary Care 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!

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