The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7227 p800
7 December 2002

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Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (www.psnc.co.uk)

No protection for prescribing training, says chief pharmaceutical officer

The Department of Health will not fund protected learning time for pharmacists who want to become supplementary prescribers, according to Jim Smith, chief pharmaceutical officer for England.

He said at last week's Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee community pharmacy conference in Birmingham that training was an issue, but added: "Ring-marked funding from the Government will not support protected time. Any funding for that will need to come from the National Health Service locally, and I think NHS organisations and private sector employers will have to meet some of those costs."

Mr Smith drew a parallel with nurse prescribing, where the Government had also not been able to cover all the costs. He added that he expected the training for supplementary prescribing eventually to become incorporated into undergraduate programmes.

Mr Smith's comments came in answer to a question from Ian Facer, of Central Lancashire Local Pharmaceutical Committee, who said that his area had seen a poor uptake for nurse prescribing as a result of the time needed to get proper training.

The PSNC has expressed concern at the lack of Government support for protected time. Alastair Buxton, head of NHS services at the PSNC, told The Journal that it could discourage some pharmacists from taking on the role: "Twenty-five days [of training] is a long time — it is a big commitment from a time and a financial point of view."

He said employers and contractors would need to weigh up whether potential new income streams generated by supplementary prescribing would make up for the initial investment needed for training. Mr Buxton added that the training itself should be flexible and should depend on the needs of individual pharmacists: "The PSNC view on this is that a one-size-fits-all type of contract is not always right for everyone. We feel it would be useful to look at pharmacists' competencies at the beginning of the process, and then target learning in areas where they are weak."