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All integrated care boards (ICBs) or health boards should have a lead paediatric palliative care pharmacist role, according to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s (RPS’s) updated palliative care policy.
The Society made the recommendations in a policy document, published on 27 November 2025, expanding on its original recommendations to cover all three GB nations.
In a statement published alongside the updated policy, the RPS said: “Many patients and families still face delays getting essential medicines, experience poor communication between services and limited access to expert support in the community, especially out of hours.”
The refreshed policy, originally published by RPS Wales in 2018, has suggested that since not all areas of Great Britain employ a specialist paediatric palliative care pharmacist, paediatric palliative medicines teams would “benefit from the medicines expertise this pharmacist role would bring”.
“The paediatric specialist palliative care pharmacist would ensure that medicines are tailored for each individual child’s needs to provide maximum benefit and reducing adverse effects,” it said.
“Safe and appropriate prescribing and administration of medicines is essential to support children to be cared for in their own home.”
The updated policy estimated that, by 2030, between 67.0 and 84.2 per 10,000 children will have a life-limiting condition. Recent estimates suggest that around 66.4 per 100,000 children have a life-limiting condition.
However, it added: “There are huge differences across the UK in the way children’s palliative care is planned, funded and provided.
“Governments in each devolved nation must have a structured approach to the development of pharmacy roles within multidisciplinary palliative care teams,” it added, including consultant, specialist and advanced generalist roles.
The policy also notes that these pharmacists should be independent prescribers, who — through communication with the palliative multidisciplinary team — “can make decisions according to the [patient’s] pre-determined advance care plan”.
“This would be particularly important in the last few days of life to help keep patients in their homes, should this be their wish,” it said.
Claire Anderson, president of the RPS, commented: “Patients and their families should not have to spend their final months navigating fragmented care.
“Pharmacists are central to helping people stay comfortable and supported at the end of life, but too often they are working without access to vital information or key systems.
“Our recommendations set out practical steps that governments, the wider NHS and all involved in a patient’s care can take now to ensure people receive safe, timely and compassionate care and ensure consistent, expert care throughout the last phase of life.”
Sarah Holmes, chief medical officer at end-of-life charity Marie Curie, said: “Pharmacists have the skills and accessibility to make care faster and easier to access for patients and their families; they’re an essential part of end-of-life and palliative care.
“As a leading palliative and end-of-life charity, we have long called for better integration between services, so we welcome this call for urgent reform. Dying people need access to care that is within reach for them — right on their doorsteps — and pharmacists along with the wider NHS play a vital role in providing this.”
In 2023, the RPS and Marie Curie jointly published the Daffodil standards, which were developed to improve the care that community pharmacies can offer to patients nearing the end of their lives.
In June 2025, the charity Hospice UK called for a national standard for community pharmacy palliative care to make services more consistent.
Speaking at the Hospice UK conference, held on 26 November 2025 in Liverpool, pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock launched the ‘Palliative and end-of-life care modern service framework’ — the first of several modern service frameworks currently under development, aimed to target issues such as dementia and frailty, cardiovascular disease and severe mental illness.
“Our modern service framework will seek to end unwarranted variation in care by putting a floor under the kind of care that people can expect,” he said.
