PJ view: We cannot expect pharmacists to develop their skills on goodwill alone

It may sound obvious to call for a workforce that provides crucial healthcare to the public to have designated time to develop their skills — but this is where we find ourselves.

The Pharmaceutical Journal called for all pharmacists to have protected learning time five years ago, and the fact it is renewing its call shows that little has changed.

In an investigation published on 18 September 2025, data analysed by The PJ — obtained via a freedom of information request, which was designed in collaboration with the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists (GHP) and sent to all NHS trusts and health boards in Great Britain — revealed that more than one-quarter (28%) of 201 respondents did not provide protected learning time to pharmacists as part of job plans. 

The data also show that of the health boards and trusts that use job plans — which involve allocating a proportion of time a pharmacist will spend on clinical care and other supporting clinical activities within their role — 13% explicitly stated that this was for consultant or advanced clinical pharmacists only, and just 8% use job plans for all the pharmacists they employ.

Similarly, results from The PJ’s 2025 salary and job satisfaction survey show that just over one-quarter (27%) of pharmacists have accessed protected learning time in the past year.

With ambitions for pharmacists to maximise clinical skills, set out in the NHS ten-year plan for England and visions for Scotland and Wales, and the first influx of pharmacists qualifying as independent prescribers in 2026, it should surely be the case that all pharmacists have a job plan as standard, with protected learning time clearly allocated and defined in this? Would it also not serve the workforce well to know where pharmacists’ time is currently being spent, before this swathe of changes begins to come into effect?

A culture shift may need to take place for this to happen. In a blog published in The PJ in August 2025, Poureya Aghakhani writes about implementing job plans at London North West University Healthcare Trust to optimise pharmacists’ clinical efficiency; however, he notes that a major challenge was that “most pharmacists had never seen one”, causing team anxiety.

Making job plans the norm, where pharmacists can see time clearly stipulated for them to develop their skills, would surely help to eliminate this and reduce stress more widely.

Data from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s (RPS’s) ‘Workforce wellbeing survey’, published in February 2025, show that nearly half (47%) of respondents said a lack of protected learning time had a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing. 

Of course, offering protected learning time is not a magic bullet, but giving pharmacists the time and space to reflect and develop their skills for their ever-demanding roles would at least go some way to help with mental health challenges. In The PJ’s investigation, pharmacists reported having to take their work home owing to a lack of protected time during working hours, which will not help a workforce already struggling with burnout.

In February 2025, the GHP launched a campaign calling for all pharmacists to have at least 10% of their contracted hours protected for supporting professional activities embedded in their job plans. 

In its policy, the RPS also calls for all pharmacists to be able to access protected learning time in working hours.

The PJ echoes these calls. We cannot expect pharmacists to level up their skills on goodwill alone – protected learning time is essential to give pharmacists the breathing space to build their skills to serve patients in a profession undergoing ever-increasing demands. PJ