Pharmacy Pressures Survey: Please take part  

Community pharmacy owners and teams across England are facing unprecedented financial and operational challenges and raising this with Government and the NHS remains PSNC’s top priority.

Together with the other national pharmacy organisations we are working both to show policy makers the severity of the problems and to lobby for Government and NHS action to ease the pressures.

To inform this work, we are today launching our 2023 Pharmacy Pressures Survey and asking everyone who works in or owns a community pharmacy to take part.

The survey results will be critical to help us to show Government and the NHS how difficult things now are for pharmacies, and to persuade them to take action. We will be using the results in our negotiations, in our conversations with MPs, Ministers and in national media work as part of the joint #saveourpharmacies campaign.

The Pharmacy Pressures Survey is once again comprised of two surveys to give us insight into both financial and operational pressures. Participants may notice that many of the questions are similar to last year – this is to give us a clear comparator of how much things have worsened since last year.

The surveys have been made as short as possible and should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. They will be open for completion until 23.59 on Sunday 26th February.

There are two separate surveys for:

• Pharmacy business owners/head office representatives
  This survey covers the pressures being experienced by businesses, looking at the overall running of the pharmacy business including financial and staffing pressures. Please note that only one representative from each pharmacy business should complete this survey – please check this is the case before doing so. Click here to view/download a copy of the questions.

• Pharmacy teams
  This survey covers the day-to-day pressures experienced by pharmacy teams including supply chain issues, patient interactions/experience and staff morale. Click here to view/download a copy of the questions.

Independent contractors or pharmacy owners who also work day-to-day in a pharmacy are very welcome to complete both surveys if they would like to, or they could complete the owners survey and encourage team members to complete the team survey.

We very much appreciate your continued support in completing these surveys, particularly at this very busy time: we know that completing surveys takes precious time. The results of these Pressures Surveys will be put to maximum use through both our negotiations and our joint influencing and campaigning work to make the case for further investment in the sector.

PSNC Chief Executive Janet Morrison said:

“Last year our Pressures Survey received a huge number of responses for which we were so grateful. The results have been invaluable: we still use them regularly to highlight the problems facing community pharmacies, including using them as part of our negotiations, sharing them with Ministers and MPs, and citing them in Parliamentary briefings and national media work.

In recent months we have invested significantly in our influencing work to get the message across to Government and NHS England that the community pharmacy network is facing a fearsome range of pressures and challenges. The sector is on its knees and the consequences of the current funding situation, and the damage of increasing business costs, means a serious risk of collapse.

To help us to keep making the case and to push for short and long-term funding increases, we are asking contractors and pharmacy teams to help us once again. A big response to these surveys will give us an accurate and persuasive snapshot of the scale of the problems the sector is facing which we can use in all our influencing work and negotiations.

Data always helps us to make our case, and the 2023 survey will provide us with further evidence to support our arguments – both in our ongoing discussions, and through public and Parliamentary forums. This year we have also partnered with the other national pharmacy organisations on a #SaveOurPharmacies campaign and the results of the Pressures Survey will be a key focus for that, with media and Parliamentary coverage already being planned.

We very much hope that as many people in the sector as possible will be able to take part, and I’d like to thank everyone in advance who will take the time to fill in these surveys: we really value your input.”