Readers split on £15m practice funding decision
Almost half of respondents to a C+D poll think NHS England should have invested its money in community pharmacy instead
EXCLUSIVE
C+D readers are split over whether NHS England should have committed £15 million to pilot clinical pharmacists in GP practices, a poll has revealed.
Fifty-three per cent of 88 respondents to the poll, which ran on the C+D website July 10-13, said the financial commitment showed that the NHS valued pharmacists’ skills. This compared with 47 per cent who believed the money would have been better spent in community pharmacy.
A separate poll of 156 pharmacists revealed that 60 per cent believed that the opportunity for greater collaboration with different healthcare professionals was the “strongest argument” to seek employment in a GP surgery. Twenty-three per cent thought an oversupply of community pharmacists was the driving factor.
However, 15 per cent of respondents to the poll, which ran from June 30 to July 3, said there were no arguments to move to a GP surgery because they disagreed with NHS England’s plans in principle.
Both polls were run ahead of C+D’s Twitter debate on the topic yesterday (July 16), and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) used the event to argue that NHS England’s strategy “makes sense”.
Funding these new clinical pharmacists was not an attempt to “substitute GPs”, but instead was a solution to the “severe shortage” of GPs and an “oversupply of trained pharmacists”, the RCGP stressed.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society director for England Howard Duff tweeted that the need for collaboration - combined with the oversupply of pharmacists - made a “compelling case” for placing pharmacists in GP practices as a solution to "the current crisis in primary care”.
British Pharmaceutical Students' Association area coordinator Michael Champion agreed that these factors were “internal and external motivators” for pharmacists to work within general practice.
Pharmacist Zohib Sheik said it “sounded like a brilliant plan”, but he “remained sceptical” until it was rolled out on a wider scale.
Would you consider employment in a GP surgery?
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