Successful South West Pharmacy Education Conference

The pharmacy workforce, training and education team assembled more than 90 pharmacy colleagues from across all sectors in the South West at our Pharmacy Education Conference this month. Held in Somerset, the conference was an opportunity to learn and network, as well as to engage with various exhibitor stands from commissioned regional education providers across the region.

Sessions on the day included an informative national and regional workforce update delivered by Richard Cattell, Deputy Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, and Nick Haddington, Regional Head of Pharmacy for the South West. Other keynote sessions included socialising the new Safe Learning Environment Charter from our Quality team and a session on genomics and educating the pharmacy trainee workforce.

Workshops and seminars followed with the standards for the initial education and training standards reform for pharmacists and a seminar on utilising the skills and potential of the whole pharmacy workforce. In addition, there was a very popular session on public health and health inequalities led by Professor Maggie Rae and Deborah Lear, from our South West Public Health team, and a session on pharmacy technician workforce strategy and post-registration independent prescribing.

The day closed with a dynamic Q&A panel session, which covered a huge range of topics on the pharmacy workforce agenda, future strategies and next steps in education reform. Heartfelt gratitude was extended to the pharmacy team, speakers and exhibitors for their invaluable support in making the event a success.

Delegates expressed their enthusiasm with feedback such as:

“Please can we have more of these soon. Putting our heads together in the same space is a great luxury and should be treasured.”

“Good to meet and network with others. A valuable opportunity to share ideas.”

Future engagement was encouraged as delegates were given the opportunity to give suggestions for future conference topics to help shape future arrangements with our stakeholders, trainees and supervisors across the region.

For any information on the School of Pharmacy and Medicines Optimisation work, do not hesitate to contact the team at england.wtepharmacy.sw@nhs.net.