Developed in partnership with the charity Marie Curie, the consultation will remain open for four weeks until December 1.

The RPS is calling on community pharmacists, organisations with a role in community pharmacy or palliative and end-of-life care, and those with first-hand experience of palliative and end-of-life care to contribute.

This will ensure the final standards – due to be published by spring 2023 – are “clear, relevant, current, and fit for purpose” for pharmacy teams, wider health teams, and patients and carers.

Read more: RPS links with charity to draw up end-of-life care standards for pharmacy teams

Informed by an “expert” steering group of healthcare professionals and support from the RPS Community Pharmacy Expert Advisory Group, the draft standards ask pharmacies to work on eight key areas.

These include the early identification and recording that a person has an advanced serious illness or end-of-life care needs; offering care tailored to the patient, their carer or family; providing care after death and bereavement support.

Early implementer sites “underway shortly”

Marie Curie has already worked with the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) to create the ‘Daffodil Standards’, which were released in 2019 to support general practices and care homes improve the quality of palliative and end-of-life care they deliver to patients.

It comes after research commissioned by Marie Curie revealed that three-quarters of bereaved carers said their loved one did not get all the care and support they needed.

Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of bereaved carers also said their loved one’s pain was not fully managed.

Read more: Boots launches UK-wide palliative care service in more than 2,000 pharmacies

Darrell Baker, chair of the Daffodil Standards steering group, told C+D today (November 3) that “a small number of ‘early implementer’ sites will be underway shortly and feedback from both these approaches will be used to inform that first version”.

“There may be further development of the standards themselves”  following the formal launch in 2023 as the number of pharmacies that engage with the service increases, Mr Baker acknowledged.

“That has certainly been the experience of the Marie Curie RCGP ‘Daffodil Standards’ work,” he added.

The steering group has “sought solutions” for pharmacies and individual locum pharmacists to engage with this work as “part of the day job”, Mr Baker told C+D.

“[By] keeping bureaucracy to a minimum, we hope to develop and improve the support pharmacies can provide to patients with palliative care needs and their carers”, he added.