Scotland’s high street pharmacists say they are saving over 30,000 GP appointments a week, and could play a bigger role in supporting the health of the communities they serve if they were given a greater role in areas like sexual health and vaccinations.

Community Pharmacy Scotland, which represents Scotland’s 1,250 community pharmacy practices, has issued the findings of independent research to coincide with the publication of their manifesto for candidates standing in the Scottish parliament elections.

Community pharmacy is widely acknowledged as the only part of the NHS that managed to stay open through each wave of the pandemic, providing medicines, advice and support.

The research shows over 2,100 people in Scotland are given advice every hour by community pharmacy, representing some 84,000 consultations a week. Two in five of those people said they would have made an appointment to see their GP had they not been able to speak to the pharmacist or a member of their team.

Community Pharmacy Scotland is asking for a doubling of the number of fully funded training places for pharmacists to complete their training to become independent prescribers, accompanied by additional funding to support community pharmacy prescribing through the expansion of Pharmacy First Plus to assess and treat a wider range of conditions.

The organisation wants community pharmacy to be embedded into the delivery of vaccination programmes.

Pharmacists also want to build on their role in sexual health – where they arrange emergency hormonal contraception 95,000 times a year, 80% of all such consultations – which they say shows the ‘accessibility and acceptability’ of community pharmacy when it comes to sexual health services.

Their final ask is for investment in eHealth to explore new ways of using digital monitoring and intervention tools so they can build on their work supporting people to continue to live with conditions at home or close to home.

The research carried out for Community Pharmacy Scotland showed high satisfaction rates from people using their high street pharmacy, with three quarters of people saying their community pharmacists should have access to electronic health records and nine out of ten wanting their GP and pharmacist to work closer together.

In a statement accompanying the manifesto, Community Pharmacy Scotland says it wants to build on the work that led to the launch of NHS Pharmacy First:

“We look to build on our successful track record of working with government colleagues to deliver quality services for the people of Scotland, focusing on areas that will have the biggest impact on health outcomes such as independent prescribing and public health, as well as touching on the untapped potential of eHealth projects.

“Our focus is on further increasing access to health services using the “Pharmacy First” principle, positioning community pharmacies as the first port of call for managing self-limiting illnesses and supporting self-management of stable long-term conditions in and out of hours.”

Read more: Pharmacists call for greater recognition in the NHS; Once in a generation reforms for pharmacy training; Insight: Pharmacies on the frontline of care

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