Community Pharmacy Survey
2024
1 Introduction and data
This report presents results from the 2024 Community Pharmacy Survey undertaken by NHS Education for Scotland (NES) in conjunction with Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS). Independent community pharmacies and pharmacies in the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) were asked to supply information on staff and vacancies for the week ending Saturday 16th September 2024.
The survey gathered information on staff in post and vacancies, reported as Headcount (HC) and number of hours employed. Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) was estimated by dividing the number of hours worked by a standard 40-hour full-time working week.
Information was gathered about the following roles:
- Pharmacists including Trainee Pharmacists, Locum Pharmacists and Central staff Pharmacists. The 2024 survey also captured data on Central Staff Pharmacists who were undertaking pharmacist duties, e.g., as a Responsible Pharmacist or 2nd pharmacist due to shortages.
- Pharmacy Technicians including Pharmacy Technicians with accuracy checking, Pre-registration Trainee Pharmacy Technicians and Central staff Pharmacy Technicians
- Dispensing assistants including Dispensing Assistants with accuracy checking, Trainee Dispensing Assistants and Central Staff Dispensing Assistants
- Medicines Counter Assistants, including Trainee Medicines Counter Assistants and Central Staff Medicines Counter Assistants
- Locum staff including Locum Pharmacists and Locum Pharmacy Technicians
- Relief staff including Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians and Pharmacy Technicians with accuracy checking. Figures for relief staff are reported separately at various points throughout this report, but they have also been added to figures for corresponding employed staff roles to ensure comparability with previous Years’ data. For example, figures for Pharmacists or Pharmacy Technicians will include Relief Pharmacists and Relief Pharmacy Technicians.
As Relief staff may work in more than one pharmacy in a given week, it was not possible to collect accurate headcount figures for Relief staff working in Independent pharmacies during the census week. The overall headcount totals reported for Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians must therefore be considered a slight underestimate. For reference, there were approximately 27 WTE Relief Pharmacists reported in the Independents data and 2 WTE Relief Pharmacy Technicians.
1.1 Data collection
Data were collected as follows:
- Independent (non-CCA, non-group) contractors completed an online survey for all staff. The resulting data set contained one observation per contractor. Data on Relief and Locum staff was collected as hours only.
- Data for independent, small-group contractors were collected by Community Pharmacy Scotland using a spreadsheet template. The data set contained one observation per contractor.
- Data for independent, small group central staff were compiled by Community Pharmacy Scotland using a spreadsheet template. The data set contained one observation per group. Figures are reported for “Non-CCA Central”.
- Data for small-group Employed Relief and Locum staff were collected and compiled into a separate template by Community Pharmacy Scotland, reporting national headcounts for Relief Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians, Board-level vacancy hours for Relief staff, and the number of hours worked by Locums (excluding cover for annual leave and sickness absence). The national totals are reported as “Non-CCA National”.
- Data for Company Chemist Association (CCA) pharmacy staff were collected by the CCA using a spreadsheet template. The compiled data set contained one observation per contractor.
- CCA central staff data were compiled by the CCA using a spreadsheet template. The data set contained a single observation for the CCA. Figures are reported for “CCA Central”.
- Additional data for CCA Relief and Locum staff were collected and compiled into a separate template by the CCA, reporting national headcounts for Relief Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians, Board-level vacancy hours for Relief staff, and the number of hours worked by Locums (excluding cover for annual leave and sickness absence). The national totals are reported for “CCA National”.
Independent prescribers were removed from the survey in 2023 as the data is captured elsewhere.
2 Results
2.1 Response rates
The overall response rate was 90.00%. The breakdown by sector was 100% from CCA, 77.00% from Small Groups and 99.00% for Independents. Weightings have therefore been applied to the Independents and Groups data based on Board-level response rates which were estimated using a list of eligible contractors compiled by NES and CPS.
Response rates varied across NHS Boards.
* No Pharmacies of this Group Type in this NHS Board
2.2 Composition of the workforce
2.2.1 Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians and Support Staff
Roles included: Pharmacist, Pharmacy Technician, Pharmacy Technician with Accuracy Checking, Dispensing Assistant, Dispensing Assistant with Accuracy Checking, Medicines Counter Assistant. Also includes relief staff numbers as these have been added to, e.g., the employed Pharmacist numbers. Excludes trainees, locums and central staff. Support staff are Dispensing Assistants and Medicines Counter Assistants/Healthcare Assistants/Healthcare Partners.
There are 4 main staff groups within community pharmacy settings. Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians are registered professionals with protected titles. Pharmacy Support Staff are not registered, but they are regulated through GPhC standards. Pharmacy Support Staff do not have protected titles and this means there is variation between employers over titles used.
Within this report the term Dispensing Assistant is used to describe pharmacy support staff trained to dispense prescribed medicines.
The term Medicines Counter Assistant is used to describe pharmacy support staff trained to work on the medicines counter providing information, advice and over-the-counter medicines to customers.
Differences between Headcount and Whole Time Equivalent numbers indicate the levels of part-time working.
Results are also presented by Region:
- North Region, which consists of NHS Shetland, NHS Orkney, NHS Western Isles, NHS Highland, NHS Grampian, and NHS Tayside
- East Region, which consists of NHS Lothian, NHS Fife, and NHS Borders
- West Region, which consists of NHS GG&C, NHS Forth Valley, NHS Dumfries & Galloway, NHS Ayrshire & Arran, and NHS Lanarkshire
Figures that were compiled nationally or on a per-sector basis are reported as “Non-Regional”.
A comparison of Headcount and Whole Time Equivalent indicates a higher degree of part-time working among support staff.
2.3 Relief staff
See Data collection for details on how Relief staff data were collected.
Relief staff were predominantly Pharmacists. Due to the way the data is collected relief staff are not recorded in Small Group National, CCA National and Non CCA Central locations.
2.4 All roles
Table 6 and Figure 2 present the data for all roles covered in the survey, including locums, trainees and central staff where relevant. Medicines Counter Assistants, Healthcare Assistants, and Healthcare Partners are jointly referred to as Medicines Counter Assistants. Relief staff are reported separately here but are included in other totals elsewhere in this report, so the figures in the following table should not be summed.
Pharmacists account for 18.97% of the overall WTE. The largest staff group is Dispensing Assistants which accounts for 36.74% of the overall WTE. A further 11.98% of the workforce are Trainee Dispensing Assistants.
There has been a rise in the proportion of the workforce who are Dispensing Assistants, up from 26.7% in 2022, and a fall in the proportion who are Medicines Counter Assistants. Medicine Counter Assistants can progress into a Dispensing Assistant role following training, so this may be a reflection of this progression.
The distribution of roles is broadly similar between CCA and Non-CCA contractors. Some of the reported differences between them may be due to the weighting that has been applied to the Non-CCA contractors. There are more Central Pharmacy Staff employed by non-CCA contractors compared to CCA contractors – though many CCA functions will be carried out by staff at UK head offices who are not included in these Scotland-only data.
2.5 Workforce since 2022
The following chart presents Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) figures for the roles common in all surveys since 2020.
The WTE of Pharmacists fell between 2020 and 2022, levelled off in 2023, and although there has been a small increase in 2024, the total WTE is less than that in 2020.
After a small decrease between 2020 and 2022, the WTE of Dispensing Assistants has continued to increase substantially (an increase of 37.1% from 2022).
The WTE of Trainee Dispensing Assistants increased considerably between 2021 and 2023, however there has been a small decrease in the most recent surveys.
The WTE of Medicines Counter Assistants has decreased by 45.6% over the past year.
Some of these fluctuations may be explained by the weighting that has been applied to make the figures in this years report. As the response rate has decreased this year the responding practices may not be representative of the whole workforce.
There were no GPhC Provisionally registered pharmacists captured in the 2024 survey.
3 Staff and Vacancies by Role
The following sections present WTE and vacancy rates (%) for each role group and role, nationally and at Board level. Vacancy rate was calculated as WTE vacancies divided by establishment WTE, which was taken to be the sum of WTE and WTE vacancies.
We also present the number of a given role per 10,000 people in each Board. A national benchmark is shown on the charts as a dashed line and was calculated by summing the individual Board populations. Board populations are based on National Records for Scotland’s mid-2021 population estimates.
Overall national headcount and WTE numbers for Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians and Support Staff (excluding locums, trainees and central staff) can be found above in Composition of the workforce.
3.1 All roles
The following table presents a comparison of national workforce measures between 2022 and 2024.
Nationally, the vacancy rate for Pharmacists fell from 10% to 5% and the vacancy rate for Pharmacy Technicians with accuracy checking fell from 1% to 2%. The vacancy rate for Dispensing Assistants without accuracy checking decreased from 2% to 1%, and the vacancy rate for Medicines Counter Assistant rose from to .
To clarify the data for roles with and without an accuracy checking qualification, the following table presents the same figures for Pharmacy Technicians and Dispensing Assistants ignoring that qualification.
3.2 Pharmacists
3.3 Pharmacy Technicians
3.4 Dispensing Assistants
3.5 Medicines Counter Assistants
This survey would not have been possible without the participation of Scottish community pharmacy contractors, Community Pharmacy Scotland, the Company Chemists Association and the Primary Care Community Pharmacy Leads Group. We thank them for their time and effort in providing the relevant data.