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A pharmacy pilot in Devon recently featured in the winter 2024 national pharmaceutical journal, PM Healthcare Journal.

There is a national drive to expand community pharmacist service provision to include a wider range of clinical services and independent prescribing.

The Devon Teach and Treat Pilot aims to support community pharmacists from across the county to achieve their independent prescribing qualification by providing access to suitable supervisors and clinical environment.

The project has been led by Vicky Webb, Independent Prescribing Clinical Lead at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.

The aims of the project are:

• Increase the number of independent prescribers in community pharmacy.
• Establish a sustainable model of supervision.
• Set up a community of practice for community pharmacist independent prescribers.
• Facilitate relationships between the primary care networks and community pharmacy.
• Raise awareness of the role of the Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP) and increase their capacity to train pharmacists.

For community pharmacists who want to do their independent prescribing course, one of the biggest obstacles they face is identifying a Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP) and clinical environment to facilitate the course requirement of supervised practice learning (90 hours).

Traditionally a GP from the local surgery is the first source of supervision to be considered and more recently, suitably experienced independent prescribers can act as a DPP. The best source of DPPs for community pharmacist trainee independent prescribers is from the local PCN as these are the professional relationships that must continue beyond the 6-month course. Devon practices were invited to take part in the pilot and host a community pharmacist for their 90 hours of supervised practice learning (funding was made available to practices).

Following recent research in the South West, it was clear that there is a significant need to expand supervision capacity for pharmacists. NHS Health Education England offered funding to the integrated care boards (ICB) in the South West to pilot ‘Teach and Treat’ clinics as a way of creating supervision capacity for community pharmacists. The clinics support several pharmacists training to be prescribers by providing a DPP and suitable clinical environment.

In May 2023, in collaboration with Devon ICB, the pharmacy department at University Hospitals Plymouth (UHP) recruited Vicky Webb, a nurse advanced clinical practitioner (ACP), into the role of independent prescribing clinical lead (IPCL) to establish and operationalise a model that would facilitate the supervision of multiple trainee prescribers.

Vicky spent time in community pharmacies, GP surgeries, specialist community teams, local pharmaceutical committee (LPC) and urgent treatment centres to understand more about the particular challenges faced by community pharmacists and gauge where potential supervision could be accessed.

Ten local community pharmacists were selected to apply for their prescribing qualification with the support of Devon Teach & Treat from September 2023.

Kandarp Thakkar, Chief Pharmacist University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, said: “This pilot is an important strategic initiative. The doors at the front of our hospitals are heaving and there is a real opportunity for community pharmacy to help reduce this demand. However, in the short term, as hospitals have the bigger education and training infrastructure, we need to support our community pharmacy colleagues in developing the skills they need to ultimately help us.”

From September 2026, all newly qualified pharmacists will be independent prescribers (IP) at the point of registration. This will give patients an additional point of access to experienced and skilled clinicians who will be able to consult, assess, diagnose, and prescribe within a specific remit. In turn, this should assist with some of the workload experienced by general practice and urgent care.