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Diversity Award for the Pharmacy National Recruitment Scheme
28 November 2022
Health Education England won the Diversity and Inclusion Award at the prestigious Chemist and Druggist Awards on Friday 18th November 2022. This new award aims to ‘shine a light on vital work that is being done by pharmacy teams, organisations and individuals to challenge inequality’, and was presented to HEE in recognition of our ongoing work to deliver a fairer, values-based recruitment process for all trainee pharmacists.
Historically the pharmacy recruitment model was always fragmented, with huge variation in recruitment practices leading to recruitment bias. The Pharmacy National Recruitment Scheme (NRS), also known as Oriel, was established in 2017 to offset any bias into the profession.
The award winning approach is based on NHS values, and employers accept their allocated trainee, unseen, rather than choosing one themselves. This has helped to eliminate variation in recruitment into these training posts and align pharmacy processes with other professions, such as medicine, dentistry and healthcare science. Oriel is also demonstrating a changing, increasingly diverse trainee demographic in the most sought-after posts.
According to a member of the judging panel, this was "creating a fairer profession for the future for all".
Atif Shamim, Associate Head of Pharmacy, Health Education England said:
“We are delighted to receive the first-ever C+D award for Diversity and Inclusion. Our goal is to create a truly level playing field for applicants while providing a rigorous and evidence-based recruitment process for employers. This is a large undertaking, and I would wish to thank our HEE teams and all our partners from across the pharmacy landscape for working closely with us every year. This is particularly important as we recognise that this work is ongoing. We will continue in this spirit of collaboration to review and iterate the process as required.”