Community Pharmacy

Public Health Service

(Contribution of pharmacists to health protection, health improvement and medicine safety)

Background

The Public Health Service (PHS) element of the contract aims to encourage the pro-active involvement of community pharmacists and their staff in supporting self care, offering suitable interventions to promote healthy lifestyles and establishing a health promoting environment across the network of community pharmacies by participating in national and local campaigns.

It comprises the following services:

  • the provision of advice to both patients and members of the public on healthy living options and promotion of self care;
  • the provision of NHS or NHS approved health promotion campaign materials, other health education information and additional support materials to patients and members of the public;
  • the participation in national health promotion campaigns which are on display and visible in the pharmacy for agreed periods of time, including the display of materials in a window of the pharmacy, or in the absence of a suitable window space, another space in the pharmacy;
  • the participation in local health promotion campaigns where agreed between the local NHS Board and community pharmacist;
  • the provision of a smoking cessation service, comprising of advice and supply of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and other smoking cessation products over a period of up to 12 weeks, in order to help people give up smoking; and
  • the provision of a sexual health service comprising of the supply of emergency hormonal contraception (EHC), a Chlamydia testing service and a Chlamydia treatment service.

ePharmacy Aspects

To date there is no ePharmacy support for any of the PHS services.

Support Materials

Additional PHS support materials can be found on the Community Pharmacy Scotland website.

The NES Pharmacy Public Health resource pack, Flavours of Pharmaceutical Public Health can be found on the NES website.

The Emergency Hormonal Contraceptive Leaflet is available to download