Patient Group Direction (PGD) courses

Patient Group Directions (PGDs) enable pharmacists to provide medicines and vaccines privately to support a wide range of patient groups and conditions. The NPA offers vaccination training and PGDs through our partnerships at very competitive rates on an extensive range of flu, travel, vaccination and non-vaccination/clinical (formerly oral/topical) PGDs.

PGDs enable pharmacists to supply and administer specified medicines to pre-defined groups of patients without a prescription as part of service delivery eg private flu vaccination.

Benefits to your business from offering services:

  • Increases your footfall and your revenue streams
  • Drives repeat demand
  • Provides the pharmacist with additional skill-set
  • Improves the visibility of your business in the local community profile
  • Develops your potential market

Services are good for your patients and customers as:

  • Community pharmacies are highly accessible
  • They have the assurance of being offered advice, medication and/or vaccination by a trained, accredited and trusted front-line healthcare professional
  • Your service is convenient
  • You may offer out-of-hours access due to extended opening hours

Migraine

With debilitating symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and increased sensitivity to light or sound, migraine is a common health condition, affecting around one in every five women and around one in every 15 men in the UK.

Patients regularly turn to pharmacies for means of easing their symptoms so it is a perfect setting for a comprehensive migraine prevention and treatment clinical service.

Pick 'n' mix Clinic

While we have grouped together a number of our service packages to create specific clinics, we recognise that it is also important to give pharmacists the option of tailoring their offering to the needs of their patients.

The Pharmadoctor Pick 'n' Mix Clinic Package represents an economic way of allowing pharmacies to offer their patients multiple services which are not necessarily all within the same area of healthcare. The pharmacy becomes a unique clinic, catering directly to the specific needs of its community.

Seasonal health

By signing up to the Pharmadoctor Seasonal Health Clinic Package you'll be able to help your patients stave off all manner of conditions, from colds and flu in the depths of winter through to hay fever relief in pollen season.

Flu jab

Most pharmacies now offer a seasonal flu jab service, with millions of flu vaccinations administered by pharmacists across the UK each year.

With pharmacists seeing hundreds and sometimes thousands of patients during the flu season, not only is the service vital to ensure the protection of huge parts of the population against the potentially fatal virus, it also represents an opportunity to further the awareness among the public of how pharmacies are changing from traditional dispensaries to become focussed on more clinical services.

Skincare

Patients regularly turn to their pharmacy for all manner of creams and lotions looking to discover that magic skin remedy. By running a comprehensive skincare clinic you can help patients make an informed decision as to which treatment is most appropriate

Hepatitis B

Healthcare workers such as nurses, carers and first-aiders require a hepatitis B vaccination for their jobs and would benefit from conveniently located vaccination services.

Shingles

Whilst customers 70 years old and over qualify for a free shingles vaccine on the NHS, customers aged 50-69 are not eligible, leaving a demand for a private vaccination service.

Smoking cessation

There are established NHS programmes to help people give up smoking, with many prescribing medicinal products such as Champix® being supplied when traditional Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) products have failed. Whilst medicinal products can be very effective, often smokers fail to give up on their first attempt or simply start smoking again after weeks or months of giving up.

Each individual is limited to just one attempt at giving up smoking using prescribed medication on the NHS. This means they may not able to obtain the same medicinal products to support them to give up smoking a second time, leaving demand for a private smoking cessation service.

Measles

Although measles is a vaccine preventable disease, a recent Unicef report has placed the UK as having the 3rd highest rate of unvaccinated children out of the 10 highest-income countries. Alarmingly, more than 0.5 million UK children are currently at risk of contracting the potentially deadly measles virus because they have not been vaccinated. Public Health England also reports that there were 966 confirmed cases of measles in England alone during 2018 (nearly 4 times the number in 2017); with most cases reported in people over the age of 15.

To halt this worrying trend it is vital that pharmacists begin raising awareness of the importance of vaccination and start offering the service at their pharmacies.