NHS community pharmacy.
What is community pharmacy?
Community pharmacy makes up one of the four pillars of the primary care system in England, along with general practice, opticians and dentistry. It is arguably most well-known as a dispenser and retailer of medicines, but its role is in fact much broader and includes other NHS and publicly funded services.
Community pharmacies can be found in many high street locations, in supermarkets or attached to doctors’ surgeries. There are also a range of online community pharmacies.
Community pharmacies range from large chains to smaller chains that are independently owned, to small individually owned ones. In Devon we have 202 community pharmacies.
A Strategic Framework for Community Pharmacy in Devon
NHS Devon, the organisation with delegated commissioning responsibility for community pharmacy services, has developed a community pharmacy strategic framework for the next five years.
As part of this, NHS Devon completed a public engagement process to gather feedback from those who use community pharmacy to understand more about how local people use community pharmacies now, and how they would like to use them in the future, as well as what works well and what could be better.
Thank you to all those who participated and completed our survey.
The strategic framework will help NHS Devon in the development of services that integrate processes between community pharmacy and general practice, to help patients access their prescribed items and obtain healthcare advice more easily.
To read the NHS Devon Strategic Framework for Community Pharmacy in Devon, please click here.
NHS Community Pharmacy Services
All community pharmacies in England offer the following services:
Dispensing prescriptions (medicines and devices)
- Dispensing refers to the process of reviewing the prescription, preparing, labelling, and handing out medicine (or other items such as dressings or catheters) to a named person or their representative.
Support for Self-Care
- Community Pharmacies help manage minor ailments and common conditions, by the provision of self-care advice and where appropriate, the sale of medicines.
Signposting to other Health & Care Professionals / Services
- Community Pharmacies help people who ask for assistance by directing them to the most appropriate source of care and support in the area.
Public Health promotion & healthy living
- Community Pharmacies participate in and promote national health campaigns and undertake interventions on areas of public health concern, such as smoking cessation.
Disposal of unwanted medicines
- If your medicine is out of date or unwanted, do not put it in the bin or flush it down the toilet. Community Pharmacies will accept your unwanted medication and safely dispose of them.
Discharge Medicines Service (DMS)
- Hospitals can send an electronic referral to a patient’s usual pharmacy after they have been discharged from their hospital stay, so the pharmacist can check that their medicines match the record held in the pharmacy and the patient’s surgery. A check is also made by the community pharmacist when the first new prescription for the patient is issued by the GP, and the patient with/without their carer can have a consultation with the pharmacist to ensure they understand which medicines they should now be using.
Repeat dispensing
- Patients using the service obtain repeat supplies of NHS prescriptions without the need for their GP practice to issue a prescription each time a supply is required. Repeat dispensing is designed to save patients time ordering prescriptions, admin time in GP practices and improve convenience and access to prescriptions for patients, by allowing community pharmacy teams to take a more active and planned role in the process of safe supply of patients’ regular prescriptions.
Find a pharmacy
To find your nearest Community Pharmacy, you can use the NHS ‘Find a Pharmacy’ online tool.
