Building the evidence base to inform a national framework for independent prescribing in community pharmacy

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) commissioned Thiscovery to build a practical, multi-stakeholder evidence base on independent prescribing in community pharmacy. The primary goal was to capture the experiences and views of community pharmacists, other professionals, and patients.

Participants

482 people across three linked surveys: 187 community pharmacists, 76 other stakeholders (including primary care professionals and NHS commissioners) and 219 patients, recruited UK-wide.

Methods

Three linked online surveys combining closed-ended questions, 5-point Likert scales, and free-text questions, enabling comparison and rich qualitative insight across all three groups.

Impact

Findings fed directly into Creating the Conditions for Safe Prescribing, a national framework for expanding independent prescribing in community pharmacy. This framework was developed by Q in partnership with the NPA, and informed by research conducted by Thiscovery, it was tested with senior stakeholders at a Deliberative Stakeholder Roundtable (July 2026) and launched in September 2026.

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What we did

Designed and delivered three linked surveys (for community pharmacists, other primary care professionals & commissioners, and patients) so we could compare perspectives and surface where views aligned and where they diverged.
Combined closed-ended questions and rating scales with open-ended, free-text questions to capture both patterns and individual reasoning and experience.
Recruited through NPA, Q and Thiscovery's own networks to reach pharmacists at every career stage, clinical prescribers and commissioners across primary care, and patients across the UK.
Coded and analysed the free-text responses to identify recurring themes and illustrative participant quotes.
Presented the findings in a full Insights Report, Executive Summary and infographic, as well as a presentation at the Deliberative Roundtable event. This informed Creating the Conditions for Safe Prescribing, the national framework for expanding independent prescribing in community pharmacy, developed by Q in partnership with the NPA and launched in September 2026.

Key insights

This listening exercise surfaced a consistent story: strong support for the principle of expansion, and broad agreement on what a safe, scaled service requires, but real divergence on whether those conditions are currently in place.

1

Community pharmacists strongly support expansion but see a system not yet built for it: 84% agreed expanding prescribing would improve access to timely treatment and that the NHS should commission and fund it as standard, yet only 30% felt the current infrastructure was adequate for scale.

2

Nearly a third of qualified prescribers surveyed weren't using their qualification to prescribe at all, largely because NHS commissioning and local clinical pathways simply don't exist yet in their area.

3

Funding and IT integration were the two most consistently cited barriers, raised independently by pharmacists, other professionals and commissioners alike as the structural prerequisites for safe, scaled prescribing.

4

The shortage of Designated Prescribing Practitioners (DPPs) is a critical, largely unfunded bottleneck that limits how quickly the qualified prescriber workforce can grow.

5

Patients are broadly positive but conditional: 86% would see a pharmacist prescriber if their GP surgery was closed, though comfort drops for more complex conditions, and patients want clear assurance about training, privacy, and access to their medical records.

6

A significant minority of other professionals remain sceptical of pharmacist clinical competence, but over half of clinical prescribers said they would in principle be willing to support the training pipeline themselves, as DPPs, supervisors or mentors.

Improvement in action

These findings have fed directly into Creating the Conditions for Safe Prescribing, a national framework for expanding independent prescribing in community pharmacy, developed by Q in partnership with the NPA, and informed by research conducted by Thiscovery.

After being tested and refined with senior stakeholders at the Deliberative Stakeholder Roundtable, the framework was launched at an event with leaders from across primary care and the NHS on 24 September 2026. It sets out what needs to happen for pharmacist prescribing to expand safely, consistently and sustainably across the UK, covering the structural conditions of adequate funding and integrated IT, strong working relationships between GPs and community pharmacists, and patient confidence backed by outcome data. Each of these reflects priorities raised by participants in the research.

The research also surfaced a clear equity issue for the NPA to take into national policy conversations, as limited or uneven NHS commissioning could shift pharmacist prescribing towards private provision and widen inequalities in access.

Bringing pharmacists, other professionals and patients together in one evidence base and coupling this with Q’s expertise to convert this into a practical, tested and refined framework, has given the NPA a shared, credible foundation for the framework and for its case to Government and NHS England. There is strong support for expanding prescribing in community pharmacy. What's needed now is the funding, IT integration and commissioning to make it real.