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A Vision for Pharmacy in the new NHS

In doing so, it is important that all those concerned - patients, the wider public, the profession and others working within the NHS - are able to inform and contribute to that vision. We propose a number of questions that we have drawn from the proposals set out in A Vision for Pharmacy. We hope that these will encourage further thinking about pharmacy today and ways in which this might develop in the future. We welcome responses to these questions but those responding may also wish to comment more widely.

However, we believe that there are certain roles and functions within pharmacy that should not change.

We fully recognise that pharmacists are skilled health professionals providing expert advice and support in making the best use of medicines. Patients and the public place a high level of trust and confidence in pharmacists' knowledge and skills. The value of their role within the NHS cannot be overestimated and that must be retained.

But pharmacy can - and in many places already does - provide an ever-growing range of services and these, too, have a central part in the modern NHS. In this way, pharmacists contribute to improving patient services and, at the same time, take the opportunity to make better use of their skills and deploy these to better effect.

Community pharmacies are not just another shop on the high street or in the retail centre. We believe they should be clearly seen as places where patients are able to access readily an increasing range of healthcare services. They are a valuable resource for improving health and reducing health inequalities, especially for vulnerable and deprived populations. Community pharmacy can offer a fulfilling career for pharmacists and their support staff, attracting future generations of young people to the profession and encouraging those who have left to return.

Community pharmacy will need to make changes in order to provide the services that patients and the new NHS want and need. And it will do so in a more competitive retail environment. In doing so - and we are confident that it will - it will be fairly rewarded.

Hospital pharmacies are continuing to develop the specialised services that patients need, through the use of modern technology, the innovative and imaginative use of staff skills and the increasingly important role of specialist pharmacists, and through influencing effective and efficient medicines management strategies across local health communities.

More than ever, the last three years has demonstrated the unique and valuable contribution that pharmacy makes to patient care. We believe pharmacy's full potential is only now beginning to be realised. We believe it has the resources, the capability and the desire to go even further in the years ahead.

This paper sets out our vision for pharmacy for the years ahead. It rightly celebrates pharmacy's successes - achievements since publication of Pharmacy in the Future in 2000. During this time, there have been other far-reaching changes in the NHS and it is both timely and appropriate to look again at the future shape and direction of pharmacy.

• Download discussion paper (PDF, 132K)
• A Vision for Pharmacy in the new NHS: Response issued 2 March 2004