Community pharmacists are being urged to complete a survey about their experiences of flu vaccination training following reports that it is "a bit of a hotchpotch".

The survey still needed input from more pharmacists to determine the quality of training, despite a "good response" so far, said PharmaDoctor, which launched the survey a month ago with the National Patient Group Direction Association (NPGDA).

The 11 survey questions ask pharmacists to rate their training and confidence in delivering the flu vaccination service.

Reports of differences in training and missing modules had led to the development of the survey, PharmaDoctor, which runs its own flu vaccination training, told C+D yesterday (September 1).

"Anaphylaxis on pregnant women... was lacking from one person's training, which meant they couldn't do a large swathe of the NHS contract," said Joaquim Pereira, who is in charge of PharmaDoctor's technical and marketing divisions.

There were also no controls in place to check training providers were meeting relevant standards after they had been approved by the NHS, and the system was a "bit of a hotchpotch", he reported.

Training standards themselves were also causing problems, Mr Pereira added, as demonstrated in London. NHS London required pharmacists to be trained to a higher standard than pharmacists outside the capital, causing "confusion" and a "mess" for multiples that wanted to use one training package, Mr Pereira said.

These issues made it "important" for pharmacists to give their feedback, he argued. "As far as we're concerned. we have to do what we can to open things up as much as possible and find out information... that we can then feed [back] to the NHS," said Mr Pereira, who hoped the findings would help to improve pharmacy's future clinical progress.

The survey will run till the end of the flu vaccination season.

	Could your flu vaccination training have been better?