Community Pharmacy Devon Weekly Dose 💊

Thursday 30th October 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.

Pharmacy Owners - If you're Struggling, we can Help

If you're struggling to keep up with the ever-changing world of pharmacy you're not alone and there is help available.

The Improving Resilience in Community Pharmacy Mentoring and Coaching Programme is designed to support contractors to enhance the resilience and financial integrity of their pharmacy business enabling you to provide a full range of services. This works towards the vision for pharmacy in the NHS Ten-Year Plan and will see the pharmacy business grow in terms of turnover and profit.

To learn more watch the video and read the letter.

If you would like to take part please apply by completing the form online here by the 7th November 2025.

Antimicrobial Stewardship: Pharmacy First Consultations Clinical Audit

Pharmacy owners must complete a clinical audit focused on the clinical advice and consultations provided to patients scoring FeverPAIN 0-3 on the Pharmacy First Sore Throat clinical pathway. The 2025/26 clinical audit should be conducted from 1st September 2025 and completed no later than 31st March 2026.

The audit must be carried out with a minimum of 10 patients over four weeks, or over an eight-week period if 10 patients are not achieved. Pharmacy owners should make a record of the start and end date of the audit as they will be required to enter this information into the MYS portal when they make their declaration. Pharmacy owners should choose an eight-week consecutive period between the audit launch and 3rd February 2026 to commence the data collection (please ensure you complete the audit no later than 31st March 2026).

The pharmacy must have completed the audit, sharing their anonymised data with NHS England, and incorporating any learnings from the audit into future practice by the end of 31st March 2026. The information that needs to be submitted to NHS England is included in the audit document, which will be accessible from the NHSBSA website by the end of May 2025, and must be reported on the MYS data collection tool.

See here for further information

Expansion of the NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service: Updated Service Specification & Patient Group Directions

In anticipation of the expansion of the NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service to include emergency contraception, the updated service specification and patient group directions (PGDs) will be published on NHS England’s website on Monday 20 October 2025. This will allow community pharmacy teams to prepare for the service expansion, including the delivery of PGDs by pharmacy technicians.

IT suppliers plan to update their systems ahead of go-live to allow contractors to record consultations appropriately and in line with the changes. The current service documents will be available on the NHSBSA website and will remain in place until the service commencement date for these enhancements is announced and authorised by NHS England.

Community pharmacy teams providing the NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service should read the updated service documents and sign the PGD authorisation sheet(s) in preparation for go-live.

NHSmail is Becoming NHS.net Connect

NHSmail is being rebranded to NHS.net Connect, which includes a new homepage with easier access to email, Teams, OneDrive and support. There are no changes to email addresses or logins, and no action is required from pharmacy teams.

Pharmacy owners must ensure the shared NHS.net mailbox is accessible and linked to at least two staff members with personal NHS.net accounts. To keep accounts active, staff should log in at least once every 30 days. You can read more here.

Ask Your Pharmacist Awareness Week 3-10 November 2025

Ask Your Pharmacist Week is the flagship annual public awareness campaign for community pharmacy across the UK, taking place from 3-10 November this year. This year's theme is ‘Ask Your Pharmacist: NHS services close to home'.

A range of social media resources can be found here and remember to use the hashtag #AskYourPharmacist