Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she plans to take to help ensure community pharmacists receive comprehensive clinical supervision to ensure patient safety.

Pharmacists are qualified healthcare professionals with five years of training and are clinicians in their own right. The role of the pharmacist has become increasingly clinical as experts in medicines and with involvement in direct patient care, updated initial education and training and postgraduate training opportunities to reflect this. Pharmacists in hospitals and general practice (GP) have a clinical role that includes, for example, prescribing and the clinical oversight is embedded in those organisations. An increasing number of clinical services are also commissioned from community pharmacists. These services are supported by service specifications and Patient Group Directions that clearly set out the parameters within which the pharmacists can act and when to refer patients to a GP.