Ahead of the introduction of a nationally commissioned independent prescribing (IP) service this autumn, a new report by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has found that the majority of community pharmacists are “strongly supportive” of expanding IP but “face a system not yet built for it”.
The NPA’s survey of 187 community pharmacists, published on July 16, found that 84% agreed or strongly agreed that “expanding prescribing would improve access to timely treatment for patients” - but just 30% felt that current infrastructure is “adequate for scale”.
Read more: Pharmacy contract: What will independent prescribing look like?
Some 76% of IP pharmacists surveyed said funding and remuneration needs improvement, while 70% cited access to clinical IT systems as another “critical bottleneck” to expanding the IP service.
And almost one in three (32%) qualified pharmacists that responded to the survey told the NPA they “were not using their qualification to prescribe at all”.
“Gap between aspiration and readiness”
The NPA noted “a gap between aspiration and system readiness that runs through the survey findings as a whole”.
It said the lack of prescribing pharmacists “points to a need for expansion to focus not only on training more prescribers, but also on enabling pharmacists who are already qualified to use their skills, through commissioning, clinical pathways and wider support”.
DPP bottleneck
According to the report, “multiple pharmacists described it as extremely difficult to secure a designated prescribing practitioner (DPP) for training placements, with some reporting that they had paid informally – at their own expense – to secure one".
One community pharmacist who was surveyed said that “often the pharmacist has to pay an underhanded payment to their DPP to be their DPP. There is no official contract in place and training could be withdrawn at any time by DPP”.
Read more: Gaps in supervision and training could ‘undermine’ IPs, trust warns
This comes after a Nuffield Trust report in April highlighting “a lack of access to DPPs” as a key challenge for IP.
Pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock also revealed in February that over 400 pharmacy graduates who trained in 2025/26 and required a DPP did not have one.
Patients are positive
The NPA said that of the 482 survey participants, 219 were patients who were “broadly positive” about pharmacist prescribing.
It added that 70% of patients said they “had not yet had a pharmacist prescription but would be happy to try”, while 68% were already aware that pharmacists could prescribe.
Read more: Some 400 foundation trainees have no DPP - and may not register
The report revealed that comfort among patients was highest for minor acute conditions such as infected insect bites, and more mixed for higher-complexity scenarios like worsening asthma.
And patients’ priorities when it comes to being prescribed by a pharmacist were quick access (56%), privacy (51%) and access to medical history (49%).
Read more: Give online prescribers access to patient records, urges report
The NPA noted that there was a “striking convergence” between pharmacists, patients and other healthcare professionals on what is required for safe prescribing, with all three groups identifying medical records, clear escalation pathways and consultation privacy as “essential”.
“The disagreement is not about what is needed, but about whether it is in place yet,” it said.
It comes after the pharmacy contract for 2026/27, announced earlier this year, confirmed that a nationally commissioned IP service will be introduced and funded by government this autumn.
