Building pharmacy teams that enable advanced pharmacist practice

Advanced pharmacy practice is about more than qualifications. Building a confident, skilled pharmacy team can create the capacity pharmacists need to develop their clinical practice and support others to grow.

Published: 16 October 2026

Michelle Frazier

Deputy Superintendent Pharmacist at Crimond Pharmacy

When we talk about advanced pharmacist practice, the focus is often on the individual pharmacist: their training, qualifications and clinical skills. My experience in community pharmacy has taught me that this is only part of the picture. Developing advanced practice also depends on creating the opportunity to use those skills.

For me, that opportunity came through looking differently at how our whole pharmacy team works, making better use of everyone’s skills and creating capacity for the pharmacist to spend more time on clinical care.

Investing in the whole pharmacy team

At Crimond Pharmacy, this has not been about the pharmacist simply stepping away from the dispensary. It has been about developing the whole team so that everyone is confident and supported to work at the top of their role.

That requires investment. Team members have been supported through training and given protected time to develop. Just as importantly, we have had to build trust. Delegating effectively only works when people feel confident in their own abilities and know that they are supported.

Developing the team creates opportunity for everyone

As the team has developed, my role has been able to develop alongside it. Creating capacity has allowed me to spend more time carrying out complex clinical assessments, prescribing and managing patients through services such as Pharmacy First Plus. But the impact goes beyond the individual consultations I can provide.

This has allowed me to support others to develop. This includes pharmacy team members, student pharmacists and colleagues moving towards more clinical and prescribing roles. In turn, their development creates further capacity within the team.

It becomes a circle of improvement: investing in people allows advanced practice to develop, and advanced pharmacists are then able to help develop the people around them.

It has also allowed me to contribute beyond my own pharmacy through service development, education and wider professional work.

Credentialing is part of the journey

Achieving advanced credentialing was an important milestone for me, but I didn’t view the credential itself as the achievement. It was validation of the practice, evidence and development that had already taken place. The real achievement was creating a working environment in which that level of practice had become possible.

Capacity allows you to put skills into practice

My biggest learning has been that advanced practice cannot develop through qualifications alone. Pharmacists need the capacity and opportunity to put their skills into practice.

For community pharmacy, making the best use of the whole team can create that capacity. It benefits patients by increasing access to advanced clinical care, but it also benefits the workforce by giving people space to grow, take responsibility and develop others.

Advanced practice starts with creating the capacity to make it possible.

Find out more about RCPharm credentialing.