NHSE’s “public-facing” Pharmacy First campaign will restart today (November 11) with “minor revisions” to the original material used earlier this year, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has said.
Little detail has been released so far, but CPE added that revisions include “additional information on the age criteria for clinical pathways”.
CPE chief executive Janet Morrison welcomed the “resumption of the NHS Pharmacy First marketing campaign” but called for it to be part of a “much bigger ongoing public awareness campaign”.
Read more: ‘Pull your socks up!’ CPE slams new ‘one-off’ Pharmacy First media campaign
“NHSE must continue to effectively advertise the service to the public on a regular basis and to increase referral rates from general practices and NHS 111,” she said.
“A much longer-term campaign is a key way to support patients and the public to receive care closer to home via Pharmacy First,” Morrison added.
“Not very effective”
It comes after CPE announced in August that NHSE had “agreed to do a further campaign” to push Pharmacy First “later on this year” but had not confirmed a launch date.
CPE’s NHS services director Alastair Buxton said at the time that “it’s no use having a one-off campaign” and stressed that there needed to be “continuous advertising”.
“We are continuously telling NHSE that it needs to do more,” he added.
Read more: NHSE campaign will ‘encourage public’ to use Pharmacy First from mid-February
“The comms campaign we had from NHSE earlier in the year was not very effective frankly, I think that is the polite way to put it,” Buxton said.
NHSE’s original Pharmacy First media campaign was launched in February and was met with criticism at the time.
CPE said in March that the eligibility criteria for the service needed to be made clearer after reports of patients “yelling and throwing items” at pharmacists.
Read more: Third of public still ‘unaware’ of Pharmacy First service
And the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) said in May that Pharmacy First data indicated the media campaign had “little to no impact” on public awareness of the service.
Just last week, a National Pharmacy Association (NPA) survey revealed that some 36% of people “were unaware of the Pharmacy First service”.
Out of the 2,052 UK adults polled, a fifth (20%) believed that common conditions “could only be treated through their GP”.
