This is only relevant to pharmacies located within North East Hampshire & Farnham CCG
Pharmacies included in the area where this scheme operates are: NEH&F pharmacies eligible for emergency PPE |
Repesentatives of Frimley ICS's Mutual Aid team have reached out to local community pharmacies to find out how they are coping in general at the moment and also to supply them with an emergency supply of masks/gloves/aprons, where they were experiencing urgent shortages within their usual supply routes.
In case you are not aware of the Mutual Aid team, they are a small team composed of members of fully/partially redeployed staff from across the Frimley ICS; to help keep community/primary healthcare services stocked with PPE for their staff, when they run into emergency issues.
The team have shared data gathered through doing this work with pharmacies.
- Out of 60 pharmacies, 42 had no urgent issues, 13 had urgent issues (12 of whom have now been delivered to)
- 5 they had repeated issues with trying to contact them over the phone.
- Out of the 55 they were able to contact, that’s a 24% rate of requirement for urgent PPE.
In general, there are some themes that came up:
- For most chain pharmacies, it seems that their head offices have supply chains set up to equip their staff with PPE. However, note that this does not mean the chain pharmacies haven’t experienced any issues with PPE. Out of the 13 with urgent issues, 7 were independent and 6 were chains.
- Several pharmacies have stocks of visors and/or goggles, and some have put up plastic screens at their tills. Some also limit the number of people they allow in their store at one time.
- There seems to be a range of opinions of pharmacists regarding the need to wear PPE. Some staff are very keen to ensure they all have aprons, gloves and masks, whereas others seem more relaxed about the need to wear them/purchase them. CPSC recommend following NHS England & RPS advice.
Information on how to get in contact with the Mutual Aid team, if the pharmacies are running out of stock of PPE for their staff are shown on the following attached documents. They propose that pharmacies email the Mutual Aid Team inbox (below) when they have an urgent issue, then they can get in contact and organise a delivery, if appropriate.
Action required:
Attached is a template that can be used by pharmacies for this purpose. A spreadsheet detailing the email addresses given by staff as the preferred contact for each pharmacy was created for use by Mutual Aid. They recommend that you include this address provided to Mutual Aid as well as your NHS shared mailbox addresses to ensure receipt.
- Mutual Aid template for emergency supply of PPE (email page 2 to Mutual Aid contact address)