Community Pharmacy England’s Pharmacy Advice Audit is taking place over the next fortnight (3rd to 16th June 2024), and we would be hugely grateful to anyone who is able to take part.
Pharmacy owners and their teams are encouraged to record information about the informal healthcare advice that they are giving over the course of a single day, with the results providing a critical measure of the increasing number of people relying on community pharmacies.
As we continue to call and make the case for more funding for community pharmacies, your participation will help us quantify and further understand any ‘halo effect’ in driving more people to pharmacies for health care information and advice that does not meet the gateway criteria for paid Pharmacy First consultations.
Pharmacy teams are requested to carry out the audit on just a single day and, once completed, submit their data to us via PharmOutcomes. Our audit has designed to be as simple as possible to carry out and we hope to receive data from as many pharmacy teams as possible to build a strong evidence base.
We appreciate your participation in this audit, especially when you are facing immense pressures. The results of the audit will be of great benefit to our ongoing call for more funding, as well as in our wider conversations with MPs, Ministers, and in national media work.
Janet Morrison, Chief Executive, Community Pharmacy England, said:
“The Pharmacy Advice Audit is an important tool in gathering evidence of the efforts and value of community pharmacy teams across the country. The data you provide will show the huge amount of unpaid work pharmacy teams do for the NHS, demonstrating the situation clearly to decision makers and those who influence them. As we work to monitor the implementation of Pharmacy First and set the building blocks for the future CPCF, such data will be of critical importance.
I would therefore ask all pharmacies to take part in this audit if they can. This invaluable evidence will greatly improve our chances of gaining traction through our campaigning and lobbying work. Thank you in advance for your participation.”
How to take part
To successfully complete the audit, pharmacy teams will need to:
Record patient/customer interactions where:
advice was given by either a non-pharmacist team member and/or a pharmacist AND
the consultation is not covered by the Pharmacy First service.
Carry this out across a full working day, recording all consultations.
Estimate the percentage of consultations that were recorded (this is to recognise that some consultations may be missed).
When all consultations have been completed, enter the data on PharmOutcomes.
Further information and resources, including a template for data entry, can be found at: cpe.org.uk/adviceaudit
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