Community Pharmacy Devon Weekly Dose 🎄

Thursday 18th December 2025

🎄We at Community Pharmacy Devon would like to wish all our contractors a very happy Christmas and New Year. Thank you for all of your support and hard work throughout 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.

‼️Shape the New Pilot Training Pathway for Early Career Pharmacist Prescribers 2026-27

From 2026, NHS England will pilot a new education and training pathway for newly qualified Early Career Pharmacist prescribers and are inviting employers, supervisors, learners, Higher Education Institutions and other partners to be part of this exciting journey.

The aim is to meet the needs of early career pharmacists and employers, enabling the delivery of high-quality care to patients. Participation will help shape an equitable pathway aligned with service priorities.

❗To register interest and join the conversation, please complete the form by Friday 8 January 2026.

‼️Upcoming NMS Training - Book Your Place Now!

Providing the New Medicines Service and want a clinical update (and fantastic CPD) for the new, expanded ‘depression’ arm of the service? Then look no further than our Mental Health NMS Update event in Exeter on 27th January 2026.

We will host an evening event covering contractual service updates, a whistle-stop mental health update (tailored to community pharmacy teams from a local secondary care mental health expert) and case discussion of real-world scenarios that could happen in your pharmacy. As always there will be hot food and all members of the pharmacy team are welcome to attend.

Book a place here.

New Campaign Launched to Raise Awareness of NHS Services

A new awareness raising campaign was launched recently to help improve the public’s understanding of the different services available as the NHS heads into winter.

The campaign features a short film, titled ‘24 hours NOT in A&E’, focusing on pharmacy, NHS 111, the NHS App and general practice showcasing the things that these services can help with – quickly and easily. Please promote the campaign, including the video, across public-facing channels. The campaign assets are available on the Campaign Resource Centre.

Smoke Free New Year 2026 - Resources Now Available

New Year quit smoking resources are now available to view and download from the Campaign Resource Centre. They have created a new suite of resources to help you encourage and support people to quit smoking this New Year and beyond.

Theme for New Year

We know that a significant number of people who smoke have tried to quit before, with many quit attempts being made without using any form of quitting support. The bulk of the New Year resources promote the key message that 'This time will be different' if they choose to quit with support, and that quitting smoking is therefore a 'Resolution they can keep'.

Alongside these specific New Year resources, they have also produced several new ‘always-on’ assets that can be used both during the New Year period and beyond. Please download the resources here.

Opportunity - Participate in Remunerated Digitally Enhanced Asthma Review Pilot

Smart Respiratory are looking for community pharmacies to participate in ‘Digitally Enhanced Asthma Reviews’ for patients on MART, Preventer or Reliever MDI inhalers. There is potential to link to the existing NMS Asthma structure, whereby Smart Respiratory remunerates the pharmacy for their time and provide free devices to the patient.

Pilot opportunity is available to support patients using a smart device to support asthma patients Further details are available here.

To take part, complete the online form here.