Have you completed the first module in this series on urgent care?

Part one: Exploring urgent care

In part 1 of this series, we considered the definition of urgent care, the factors contributing to pressure on urgent care systems and how community pharmacy can help. Now, we will focus on how people commonly use community pharmacy and what can be done to raise awareness of pharmacy as a point of care.

In general, when someone visits a community pharmacy, there are three possible outcomes that they expect:

• Advice – in circumstances when the patient does not need medicines and can manage the condition themselves
• Referral – if there is no appropriate pharmacy supply and the patient needs to seek help from a different healthcare provider
• Supply – if the patient will benefit from medicines and the pharmacy team can offer advice and take responsibility for the patient’s care.

The outcome is determined by the pharmacist or pharmacy team member using their professional judgment to make decisions on the best course of action for individual patients, based on the severity of symptoms and the accessibility of local services (e.g. waiting times for routine and urgent GP appointments, and the availability of other urgent care services locally).

However, the NHS England Urgent and emergency care review identified that there is little public awareness of the range of services provided by pharmacies and pointed to evidence suggesting that they are often not seen as the best place from which to seek general health advice. 

Indeed, there are many positive areas of practice that pharmacy teams may take for granted and assume everyone knows about, when in fact little is known about them among the local population. There is therefore a need to change public perception of community pharmacy’s role so that community pharmacy can achieve its potential and better support urgent care.