Prescribing & Medicines Management
Issue no 2, p3
March/April 2003

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Prescribing training funds agreed

Funds to train pharmacists to become supplementary prescribers have been agreed and secured in Wales and Scotland in the past month.

The Scottish Executive has announced that central funding will be made available to NHS Education for Scotland to enable about 40 pharmacists to begin training at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, pending accreditation of the course by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Meanwhile members of the All-Wales Medicines Strategy Group heard at their last meeting in March that non-recurring funding had been agreed for training. Professor Roger Walker, AWMSG chairman and director of pharmaceutical public health, Gwent Health Authority, said: "£0.5 million of non-recurring monies has been agreed to fund the training of 250 nurses and pharmacists, and the AWMSG is setting up a sub-group to administer that and look at the training programmes that need to be put in place."

The sub-group was established at the last meeting of the AWMSG, and is due to report back to the next meeting in June, after which the recommendations will go to the minister for health and social services, Jane Hutt.

"The details still have to be worked out about how pharmacists and nurses will be selected for training, but you don't have to be a genius to work out that the model will be similar to that proposed in England," added Professor Walker. It was likely that the first cohort would be identified from pharmacists and nurses who had support from their practice or pharmacy mentors, he said.