Carolyn Wickware

Executive Editor

Carolyn Wickware is Executive Editor at The Pharmaceutical Journal

Negotiator urges government to allow pharmacies to cut opening hours by a third to manage cost pressures

A statement from the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee sets out a range of regulatory easements to help pharmacies deal with financial and logistical pressures.…

Antidepressants make up more than half of items dispensed using serious shortage protocols

Exclusive: Data analysis by The Pharmaceutical Journal also revealed that HRT products accounted for just 10% of all SSP items dispensed between October 2019 and October 2022.…

Complex and inflexible: the shortcomings of serious shortage protocols

Use of ‘serious shortage protocols’ dropped significantly in 2022, despite growing numbers of medicine shortages, leaving pharmacists calling for the system to be overhauled.…

Taiwo Owatemi: ‘Pharmacists should be able to refer patients straight to secondary care’

Labour MP and locum pharmacist Taiwo Owatemi shares her views on how to handle pressures on the NHS and why the government is dragging its feet with England’s ‘Pharmacy First’ scheme.…

NHS England to remove financial incentives for structured medication reviews in 2023/2024

Incentives to switch patients to environmentally friendly inhalers and to prescribe more patients with edoxaban will also be scrapped.…

Government advisers recommend further COVID-19 vaccine boosters for vulnerable patients

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that a spring booster should be offered to adults aged over 75 years, people living in care homes for older adults, and anyone aged five years and over who is immunosuppressed.…

Second NHS trust trials drone deliveries for chemotherapy medicines

The trial will collect logistical data to ensure the drones can safely transport the medicine between hospital sites in Northumbria.…

Drug manufacturers propose 7% levy on company profits to replace existing voluntary scheme

The Department of Health and Social Care says the proposed new 'Voluntary scheme for pricing, access and growth' — through which manufacturers would pay a fixed levy of 6.9% on profits made from selling medicines to the NHS — would be "completely unaffordable".…

Union ballots pharmacists in Northern Ireland on strike action for the first time

Members of the Pharmacists' Defence Association in Northern Ireland will be balloted on strike action over pay, after 94% of survey respondents called for a strike over the government's proposed 2022/2023 pay award.…

LloydsPharmacy’s withdrawal from Sainsbury’s may put 400 pharmacist jobs at risk, says union

Exclusive: The Pharmacists' Defence Association, which represents pharmacists at the multiple, has said "the vast majority will probably get made redundant".…