Community pharmacists contribute to workforce survey

Community pharmacy across England has contributed valuable information to a workforce survey which gathers information on staff numbers and skills to help plan the future workforce.

Health Education England (HEE), working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, commissioned the Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey (2021) across England to understand how the size and make-up of the community pharmacy workforce has changed since the last survey was conducted in 2017. It provides a snapshot of the community pharmacy workforce in spring 2021 and will help HEE and partners to inform future planning and investment decisions. 

The survey includes information on the number of staff, the number of full-time equivalents (FTE) and any vacancies in each of ten staff categories employed in community pharmacy, including regular locums and relief pharmacists and, for the first time, delivery drivers.

This emerging data set enables community pharmacy workforce data to be included as part of wider system planning at integrated care system (ICS) level and across organisations; recognising the major role the community pharmacy workforce is playing in supporting and caring for patients during the pandemic. The data will also support HEE’s work to develop the whole pharmacy workforce.

HEE is working with stakeholders to repeat this data collection on an annual basis.

Alan Ryan, Director of National Transformational Programmes at HEE said: “To create such a valuable data set reflects the commitment and co-operation of the community pharmacy workforce, including representative and professional bodies.

“We thank them for their time and effort in providing the relevant data at an exceptionally busy time. The outcome of the survey includes providing the commissioners and providers of community pharmacy services a valuable workforce data source, which can be accessed to support new ways of working across Integrated Care Systems and to inform professional development decisions.”

Read the Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey (2021)