NHS Care Services

Public Health Service

Public Health Service (PHS) Outline Specification

Background

The Right Medicine makes a commitment to further develop the role of pharmacists and their support staff in providing a health promoting environment in the pharmacy, promoting healthy lifestyles and offering opportunistic interventions in areas such as cancer prevention, oral health and smoking cessation.

Aim and Objectives

The Public Health Service (PHS) aims to support the community pharmacist’s contribution to health protection, health improvement and medicine safety.

The objectives for this service are to:

• promote self care

• make better use of window space in community pharmacies to promote health

• provide access to appropriate health education information, materials and support

• encourage a more pro-active approach to self care and health promotion

• offer opportunistic interventions to promote health

• provide a rolling programme of pharmacy based health promotion activities

Service Description

The PHS encourages a more pro-active involvement of pharmacists and their staff in supporting self care, providing a health promoting environment across the network of community pharmacies, offering opportunistic opportunities to promote healthy lifestyles and contributing to national and local campaigns.

Service Outline

A Health Promoting Philosophy

• Health protection, improving health and promoting medicine safety are an integral part of a pharmacist’s holistic approach to pharmaceutical care services.

• Interactions between community pharmacists and their support staff with patients and the general public are, in the main, about promoting health and encouraging the practice of self care. This includes providing healthy lifestyle advice when providing the core elements of the new contract (AMS, PHS, CMS and MAS), the additional services, the sale and supply of medicines and other associated products and when providing more general advice.

• In the case of adverse drug reactions the pharmacist should report any significant reactions to the Committee on Safety of Medicines Scotland (CSM) through the Yellow Card reporting mechanism.

A Health Promoting Environment

• Health Promoting Windows

• Every community pharmacy provides, where physically feasible, at least one window unit which is used to promote health and health improvement messages to the public.

• NHS Health and local health promotion departments provide appropriate materials for the health promoting windows in order to support both national and local campaigns.

• Health Promoting Areas

• Every community pharmacy provides an area inside the pharmacy to support health improvement activities and provide appropriate health education information and materials.

• These areas are accessible and clearly signposted.

• Health Promoting Materials

• Community pharmacists use leaflets and posters to raise awareness of health issues and challenge and stimulate discussion and debate on health beliefs, behaviours and attitudes.

• Leaflet displays are well maintained and regularly updated and information is targeted and available to suit the needs of local populations.

• Health Promoting Products

• Community pharmacists and pharmacies are main players in promoting good health in their communities and as a result keep ranges of products that positively promote health.

• Products injurious to health, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are not promoted or offered for sale from any area in community pharmacy premises.

• Supporting a Smoke Free Scotland

• Reasonable measures are taken by community pharmacy contractors to ensure that staff, customers and patients are aware of the new legislation that comes into force to introduce a ban on smoking in public places in order to protect workers and the general public from the harmful effects of passive smoking.

• Community pharmacies display no-smoking notices which are clearly visible to all employees, customers and patients while in the premises, including at each entrance, in the toilet facilities and staff rooms.

• Community pharmacies implement a smoke-free policy meaning that they are smoke free and people do not smoke anywhere on the premises.

• Community pharmacists support any staff who wish to give up smoking.

Health Promoting Activities

• Opportunistic Activities

• Community pharmacists are the first port of call for members of the public requiring access to advice and support for self care, health protection and health improvement.

• Community pharmacists and their support staff seek to provide opportunistic interventions whenever possible.

• Community pharmacists and their support staff make opportunistic interventions in areas such as healthy living and primary prevention, as an integral part of the day to day activity in a community pharmacy and the philosophy of pharmaceutical care practice.

• Supporting National and Local Campaigns

• Community pharmacists and their support staff give frequent, short, simple and consistent health promotion messages to promote health and deliver health gain.

• Community pharmacies support a minimum of four national and two local health promotion campaigns every year.

• These campaigns are focussed around the national priority areas such as cancer, coronary heart disease, mental health and other priority areas such as promoting good sexual health, diabetes, men’s health, oral health, smoking cessation and children’s health.

Remuneration

• The pharmacist is remunerated for providing the service through a fixed sum allowance.

This should be read in conjunction with the accompanying practice guidelines.