Foundation year training sites must submit supervisor details by June 2025, NHS England confirms

Employers taking on foundation trainee pharmacists will be required to submit details of their designated supervisors (DSs) and designated prescribing practitioners (DPPs) by June 2025, NHS England has announced.

Speaking at The Pharmacy Show in Birmingham on 14 October 2024, Atif Shamim, pharmacy dean for London at NHS England, said: “In 2021, the General Pharmaceutical Council [GPhC] published a new set of standards … the key change being for the vast majority of trainees coming through in 2025 that they will need access to a prescribing learning environment, a DS and a DPP.

“In June [2025], we will ask [training sites] to tell us key bits of information: who is the DS, who is the DPP and that will trigger your entry into the e-portfolio system so that you can start to use it to sign off all of your training.

“Then, just before the training starts for that summer, we’ll ask you to upload the training plan to kick start the year.”

For the first time this year, all pharmacist foundation training places must be offered through the national recruitment scheme via the Health Education England Oriel system.

From December 2024, employers will be able to inform trainees of their allocated training programme.

Shamim added: “Everyone has to go through the national recruitment scheme; that’s how training sites get the funding and how the trainees get their training places.

“One of the other things that this has allowed us to do is to actually standardise what we pay as a training contribution for training across the board, which, again, is the first time that this has happened.

“A standardised approach also means that we can then provide a consistent offer of training for all those sites.”

Following changes to pharmacy training in 2021, all trainees in 2026 and beyond will become independent prescribers from the point of GPhC registration. This means that trainees from the 2025/2026 foundation year will need a DPP to supervise them during their prescribing training.

In October 2023, NHS England announced that any employer wanting to take on a foundation trainee pharmacist in 2025/2026 must confirm that they can provide access to a DPP by March 2024. 

However, ​a shortage of DPPs has been an ongoing concern among pharmacists.

In August 2024, The Pharmaceutical Journal reported that less than 20% of pharmacists undertook DPP training over the past year.

Additionally, results from a survey of foundation year training sites across the Black Country Integrated Care Board area also revealed that more than 50% of respondents did not have a DPP in place for the 2025/2026 pharmacist trainee foundation year.

Commenting on the NHS England announcement, Graham Stretch, president of the Primary Care Pharmacy Association, said: “By June 2025, providers of placements would surely have had to finalise their DS and DPP.

“I am still confident — but there is no room for complacency — that sufficient placements will have both a DS and DPP in place for all graduates joining the foundation year in July 2025.

“There is a continuing need for all parties to work towards this goal, ensuring DPPs are identified and trained, together with sufficient active prescribing settings made available for incoming trainees to meet the requirements.”

Brendon Jiang, vice-chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS)’s English Pharmacy Board, said: “Whilst there are ongoing issues with a shortage of DPPs, having a deadline provides focus and we hope that training sites will be able to submit details.

“Prescribers must be appropriately supported to undertake the DPP role; with dedicated time to train, to supervise and support the trainee, and protected learning time for self-development within the workplace.”