The Community Pharmacy Workforce Development Group (CPWDG) brings together representatives from the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA), the Association of Independent Multiple pharmacies (AIMp), and the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), with the aim of proposing solutions to the community pharmacy workforce issues that the sector is facing.

The group hopes that the resources it has made available on its website – which it launched yesterday (September 22) – will help educate the public about the opportunities offered by a career in community pharmacy.

Website visitors can hear directly from young professionals working in the sector via video case studies and blogs.

“Passion and enthusiasm”

CPWDG chair and Boots chief pharmacist Marc Donovan said: “We are delighted to be launching this website to share our passion and enthusiasm for community pharmacy and we look forward to welcoming the next generation of colleagues to the profession.”

He added that a “career in community pharmacy is extremely rewarding” because pharmacy teams “make a real difference to their patients’ lives” every day “by offering expert medicines advice, providing clinical services or acting as a friendly and supportive member of the wider healthcare team”.

“Like no other profession”

Also commenting on the launch of the website, AIMp CEO Leyla Hannbeck told C+D that “community pharmacy is simply like no other profession I know”.

“[Community pharmacy] opens its doors and its heart to everyone, from the healthy to the vulnerable, the rich to the poor... Community pharmacy is the face of pharmacy and [this] enables pharmacy teams to become an essential piece of the fabric [of] people’s lives.

“Continuing reforms to our roles will see [the introduction of] more clinically facing roles and opportunities in future. In my view, this profession can be what you make it. The professionalism and care pharmacy teams devote [to their jobs] each day is [rewarded with] the loyalty and trust we receive from the public.”

In June this year, the CPWDG published a report that exposed a full-time equivalent pharmacist vacancy rate of 9% across England based on the findings of a survey it had carried out in July 2020.