Pharmacy technicians to be given greater powers to supply and administer medicines

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has today announced plans to update legislation which will enable registered pharmacy technicians to supply and administer medicines under a patient group direction (PGD).

This announcement follows a DHSC consultation on the use of PGDs by Pharmacy Technicians last year, which Community Pharmacy England responded to positively.

We welcome the outcome of the consultation, which will enable pharmacy teams to better support patients and make greater use of the pharmacy team’s skill mix. This, along with proposed legislative changes in the Supervision Consultation (although the outcome of this consultation hasn’t been announced), will allow pharmacy technicians to utilise their skills and knowledge.

Note, these new powers will not be able to be used until the required legislative changes have been laid and come into force. There is no known timescale for this currently.

Gordon Hockey, Community Pharmacy England Director, Legal said:

“As the clinical skills of community pharmacists are put to greater use through services such as Pharmacy First, it is important to ensure that pharmacies can make best use of skill mix across the whole team. This type of capacity-releasing measure was first suggested at the very start of the five-year CPCF, so it is pleasing to see this finally come to fruition.”