Calls for better awareness about new treatments being offered at Shropshire pharmacies

The Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board has started using the Pharmacy First scheme which came into operation on January 31. Every community pharmacist in Telford & Wrekin is signed up to the scheme.

The NHS scheme enables community pharmacies to ‘complete episodes of care for seven common conditions following defined clinical pathways’.

This includes earache for under 18s, impetigo, infected insect bites, shingles for over 18s, sinusitis, sore throats and uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women.

Pharmacists follow a ‘robust clinical pathway which includes self-care and safety-netting advice and, if appropriate, supplying a restricted set of prescription only medicines without the need to visit a doctor’.

A representative of the ICB attended that Telford & Wrekin Council’s health scrutiny committee last week when she said feedback from the scheme had been ‘very positive’.

She added that there was a two-month reporting lag so the number of patients using pharmacies was not yet clear.

The ICB primary access plan includes expanding the community pharmacy offer to include a blood pressure checking service and an oral contraceptive service.

Councillor Nigel Dugmore said that he was ‘crying out’ to be an independent pharmacy prescriber.

However, despite having 40 years of experience he was ‘not allowed too’. He added that in a ‘couple of years’ newly qualified pharmacists would be able to prescribe ‘whatever they want’.

He said to be an independent pharmacy prescriber they needed a prescriber to oversee them but they ‘can’t get anybody to do it’.

“The ICB should invest in prescribers to do that to get people like me cleared and out of the way,” said councillor Dugmore.

“It would make a hell of a difference.”

Councillor Dugmore said that in the first few weeks of the Pharmacy First scheme they had prescribed 100 patients a week.

However, the councillor said it should be ‘made clearer’ that they could only treat ear infections in those aged under 18 or chest infections.

“The Pharmacy First system is very good but it needs to be more clear,” he added.

Councillor Stephen Handley added that he had a recent problem with his eye and went to see the doctor.

He said the doctor sent him to the pharmacist who told him to see a doctor. In response he went to the hospital who also sent him back to the doctors.

“I’m 66 years old and I’ve never seen a doctor in my life,” said Councillor Handley.

“It took a lot of courage to see the doctor so to be turned away, I was bewildered.”

The ICB representative commented that Councillor Handley should not have been turned away without an understanding that he was going to be treated.

They added that every pharmacy had been sent a poster explaining the scheme but they couldn’t make pharmacists display them.

The ICB representative added that the body were also working towards cutting delays between primary and secondary care.