Executive summary

The demand for pharmacy services

  • 2019 has seen a shift in pace around the introduction of Pharmacotherapy services resulting in significant numbers of experienced staff being recruited from community and secondary care pharmacy teams. New pharmacy technician and pharmacy support worker roles within Pharmacotherapy services are now also being explored.
  • The additional demand for pharmaceutical services in Primary Care settings has led to a Scottish Government commitment to increase the number of pre-registration pharmacist places in Scotland over the next three years.
  • There is evidence that the demand for pharmacy services depends on the size and composition of the population, therefore the projected increase in the size and change in the composition of Scotland’s population is likely to increase the demand for pharmacy services.
  • There is evidence that the demand for pharmacy services depends on socioeconomic deprivation, therefore the demand for pharmacy services is likely to vary within and between NHS boards according to variation in socioeconomic deprivation.

Training market information

  • The ratio of applications to accepted places on four-year MPharm courses in Scotland has been decreasing overall at both providers since 2012.
  • The number of first-year students on MPharm programmes in Scotland decreased from 290 in 2011-12 to 250 in 2017-18.
  • The percentage of first-year Scottish-domiciled MPharm students decreased from 93.8% in 2012 to 81.45% in 2017.
  • The probability of completing the programme in Scotland was 0.82 within four years and over 0.90 within six years
  • The latest PRPS survey found that most students (94%) qualified from a school of pharmacy in Scotland and 84% planned to remain in Scotland.
  • 101 pharmacists qualified from an independent prescribing course in 2019 compared to 141 in 2018.
  • There were 64 WTE pharmacy technicians in training in the managed sector in 2019.

Labour market information

  • The 2019 NHSScotland staff and vacancy survey (covering Acute, Central, Mental Health and Primary Care) showed an 8.0% increase in the number of WTE staff compared to 2018.
  • The number of WTE pharmacists was 1495.7 and the number of WTE pharmacist vacancies was 146.53.
  • Since the last Staff and Vacancy survey, WTE numbers increased for Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians and Support Staff. The vacancy rates for all three staff groups also increased.
  • There was variation between NHS Boards in the number of WTE staff per 10,000.
  • The 2019 Scottish Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey reported that there were an estimated 1412.61 WTE Pharmacists working in the Community Sector and 61.34 WTE Pharmacist vacancies.
  • There were no pharmacy occupations on the latest shortage occupation list. The Directors of Pharmacy have requested that Pharmacist and Pharmacy Technician roles be added to the list at the next opportunity.
  • Since 2014, median gross hourly pay of pharmacists has decreased in both Scotland and the UK. Between 2017 and 2018 the earnings of Pharmacists in Scotland increased and were almost equal to Pharmacist earnings in the UK. Earnings of pharmacy technicians in Scotland have been increasing since 2014 and in 2018 were higher than in the UK overall.


1 Introduction

In April 2009 Audit Scotland found that workforce planning for pharmacy staff was not well developed and recommended that the SG should work with NES, NHS NSS and NHS boards to develop national pharmacy workforce planning information to support NHS boards in taking forward workforce plans and workforce development. In response to this recommendation the SG set up a Pharmacy Action Plan Steering Group and created a Pharmacy Workforce Planning Project, which agreed that NES and NHS NSS would work together to analyse pharmacy workforce data to inform the Pharmacy Action Plan Steering Group. Following a review of pharmaceutical care in Scotland the SG published a vision and action plan, which recommended that

NES, working with key stakeholders such as the Schools of Pharmacy and the NHS boards, should be commissioned to undertake data collection and trend analysis to lead to better supply and demand forecasting, and capacity planning for the pharmacy workforce.

2 The demand for pharmacy services

Audit Scotland reported that the demand for pharmacy services was a function of the size and composition of the population and the level of socioeconomic deprivation. The following sections report the latest population projections for Scotland and the spatial distribution of socioeconomic deprivation in Scotland.

2.1 Population projections

Audit Scotland reported that the demand for pharmacy services was a function of the size and, because the number of medicines people are prescribed rises after age 50, the age distribution of the population. Therefore the expected future demand for pharmacy services depends on the population projections for Scotland.

The population of Scotland is projected to increase by 2% over the ten year period from 2019 to 2029. The proportion of the population aged 50 or over is projected to increase by 6% over the same period.

2.2 The distribution of community pharmacies by SIMD

Audit Scotland reported that the demand for pharmacy services was a function of the level of socioeconomic deprivation. The following chart and map show this relationship in two ways by linking the postcodes of community pharmacies published by PSD of NHS NSS to NHS NSS SIMD data. The chart reports the number of pharmacy contractors in November 2019 by SIMD decile and the map shows the location of pharmacy contractors by SIMD rank.

SIMD is a relative measure of deprivation that ranks each of the 6,976 Data Zones in Scotland from most deprived to least deprived.

There seems to be a positive relationship between the SIMD decile and the number of community pharmacies: there were more community pharmacies in SIMD decile 1, the most deprived decile, compared to SIMD decile 10, the least deprived decile.

The map shows the location of each pharmacy in Scotland and the SIMD 2016 rank of each Data Zone.