NHS England has launched a £15 million pilot project to employ 300 pharmacists in general practices.

The pharmacists will be integrated into general practices and take on patient-facing roles, including monitoring patients with long-term conditions, creating medicines plans and providing advice on daily medicines issues.

The three-year initiative will focus on areas where GPs are under greatest pressure and is intended to ease GP workload and improve communication with other healthcare providers including community pharmacies.

In response, RPS English Board Chair Sandra Gidley said that the investment “shows the confidence that the NHS has in the pharmacy profession to deliver direct patient care.”

Rob Darracott, chief executive of Pharmacy Voice, welcomed the “greater recognition of pharmacy” but stressed the need to ensure that the initiative would help to “strengthen links between general practice and the community pharmacy network” and would not detract from other important developments for pharmacy such as the roll out of Summary Care Records access.