RCPharm 2026 Election Manifesto for Scotland

Context:

• In June 2025, Scottish Parliament voted for the creation of an integrated digital patient care record.
• Community pharmacy is taking on more responsibility within primary care than ever before. More patients are being directed to community pharmacies for everything from minor ailments to medicines advice and prescribing services.
• Successful services such as Pharmacy First and Pharmacy First Plus have the potential to be expanded to improve patient access to care.
• From 2026, every pharmacist who qualifies will be prescriber ready, meaning that they can independently prescribe medicines in the community.
• The focus on prevention means those providing care to patients in any setting must have access to relevant patient information to allow them to make effective and appropriate interventions. They must also be able to record their interventions and the outcomes.

However:

• 12% of community pharmacists surveyed by RCPharm report having no access to patient records
• 88% of community pharmacists surveyed by RCPharm report having limited access to patient records, mostly via the limited and incomplete Emergency Care Summary (ECS)
• 95% of pharmacists surveyed by RCPharm said that digital access to clinical systems by community pharmacists was important.

How to implement

The next Scottish Government should ensure that the integrated digital patient care record, which is being developed, is available to pharmacists in all care settings, with read and write access.

Benefits

• Revolutionise patient care and drive more patients to community pharmacy as a first port of call.
• Increased pharmacy and wider primary care capacity, with less time spent contacting the GP and more time spent with patients.
• Improved data sharing in primary care, which will make it easier to see all care a patient is receiving from different healthcare professionals.
• Provide community pharmacists with the data required to make clinical and prescribing decisions.
• Allow for the expansion of services and Pharmacy First, provided by community pharmacists which fully utilise their skills and knowledge.
• Ensure all healthcare practitioners involved in a patient’s care have access to all relevant information, which will improve governance and safety as well as patient care and experience.

Context

1. We need to ensure we have the right numbers of professionals being trained and entering pharmacy practice, and this can only be achieved through strong national workforce planning for pharmacy.
2. The ‘Pharmacy Workforce Report 2024’ for Scotland, developed by the NES Data Group and commissioned by Scottish Government, highlighted challenges in ensuring that Scotland has the right numbers of pharmacists in place at the right time, across all sectors:
   • The NHS Health Board vacancy rate for pharmacists was 340 WTE (7.3%) as of September 2024.
   • The community pharmacy vacancy rate for pharmacists was 76 WTE (4.8%) as of September 2024.
   • Pharmacy workforce demand continues to increase across all sectors of practice as the scope and delivery of pharmaceutical services change.

How to implement

Scottish Government should undertake comprehensive workforce planning for pharmacy, so we can ensure that Scotland has the right numbers of pharmacists working at any one time, across all sectors and the right skill mix to support services.

This will require a review of the national funding and support for pharmacy workforce planning.

Benefits

• More people will be able to access primary care closer to home, on a walk-in basis without an appointment, and to access prescribed medicines.
• The number of training posts will rise in line with the increasingly clinical role of pharmacists, expansion of pharmacy services and the population need.
• The number of foundation training places matches the number of pharmacists needed in Scotland to fill the vacancies and maintain the pipeline.
• Ensures a sustainable pipeline of pharmacists educated and trained in Scotland, to deliver pharmaceutical care to patients.
• Improve pharmacist cover across all sectors.
• Reduce variability in service provision.
• Support the shift of the balance of care from secondary to primary care.
• Reduce pressure across the healthcare system.

Context

• Medicines account for around 25% of carbon emissions in the NHS. If Scotland is to achieve net-zero, strategies for reducing carbon emissions from prescribing and medicines need to be tackled.
• There have been numerous publications from Scottish Government in recent years referencing electronic prescribing. These include Realistic Medicine, and Scottish Government Quality Prescribing Guidance.
• It is now the Scottish Government’s responsibility to ensure there is funding in place to shift the dial on sustainable prescribing to make this practice a reality across Scotland.

How to implement

• Prioritise the introduction of electronic prescribing across the NHS.
• Introduce the requirement for an environmental impact in NHS medicines procurement and improve the availability of data about the environmental impact of medicines.

Benefits

• Saving carbon emissions due to reduced paper use and reduced journeys to move paper forms; and the procurement of less carbon intensive medicines where possible.
• Supports healthcare professionals and their teams to work in more environmentally sustainable ways, supporting Scotland to reach net-zero.

How to implement

• Develop a supportive infrastructure for green social prescribing across Scotland. 

Benefits

• Providing patients with an alternative to a medicine or a prescription, which may be more beneficial to their wellbeing.

How to implement

• Embed education and training for healthcare professionals in sustainability into undergraduate and postgraduate learning.

Benefits

• Supports all healthcare professionals to practice in the most environmentally sustainable ways.

How to implement

• Ensure there is ecotoxicity specialist input on the Scottish Medicines Consortium, to support the integration of environmental criteria in medicine appraisal standards and processes.

Benefits

Ensures that environmental sustainability is a key consideration when medicines are appraised.

Context

1. As managing the health of patients becomes more complex due to increasing prevalence of long-term conditions and new innovative medicines, the need for pharmacy expertise will only increase.
2. Pharmacists do not routinely receive protected time to learn new skills and update their knowledge as part of a multidisciplinary team, or to support the learning of undergraduate and trainee pharmacists.
3. Our 2023 workforce wellbeing survey identified that 59% of respondents were not offered sufficient protected learning time and 47% noted this as negatively impacting their mental health in the last year.
4. We recognise that Scottish Government has issued guidance to NHS Boards to ensure that Agenda for Change staff have protected learning time for their statutory and mandatory training, including profession specific mandatory training^[1].
5. We call on employers and Government to recognise the importance of development beyond that classed as mandatory by regulators.

How to implement

Ensure that protected and funded development time within the working day for pharmacists is embedded in workforce planning

Benefits

• Pharmacists will be guaranteed time to upskill, expanding their scope of practice and allowing them to support more complex care in all settings.
• Pharmacists will be supported to undertake education and development to allow them to deliver a specific population need e.g.to provide earlier intervention for prevention of illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease.
• Pharmacists will have time to undertake training to provide preventative care and to enable the population to live healthier, more active lives, including those living with long term conditions.

How to implement

Scottish Government to work with Community Pharmacy Scotland to ensure that there are equitable arrangements for community pharmacy teams. 

• Ensures that all pharmacists, wherever they are working, benefit from protected learning time.
• Provides the public with confidence that all pharmacists, wherever they are working, have protected time to invest in their skills and training enabling them to provide the best care possible.