COVID-19: 12th May round-up for primary care
It’s Mental Health Awareness week this week, and we’d like to encourage all NHS staff to access the mental health and wellbeing support offers available to them. More than 108,000 downloads of the free mental health self help apps have been made so far, showing just how important this type of support is to our NHS staff. You can also access our free staff support line and the confidential bereavement line. Please visit our website for more information or to download the apps.
Recognising that it is an incredibly tough time for many of us at the moment, we have put together a suite of bereavement resources that aim to help NHS staff access support during what will be a difficult time, given the restrictions and changes to normal grieving patterns and processes for staff who come from diverse backgrounds. You can find a selection of resources that will support you during a bereavement, be that practical next steps to take as a line manager or confidential bereavement support staffed by a team of specialists. You can access the bereavement support online or call the confidential bereavement support line, operated by Hospice UK, on 0300 303 4434, free to access from 8am – 8pm, seven days a week.
Examples of good practice
The General Pharmaceutical Council has identified over 60 examples of how pharmacies are meeting their professional standards during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the examples on the Knowledge Hub.
COVID-19: 13th May round-up for primary care
Thank you also for the additional efforts made to support the additional Bank Holiday provision last week and over Easter. We can confirm, as announced on our webinars last week, that we anticipate treating 25th May as a normal Bank Holiday. This is dependent and conditional on local arrangements being made as normal to provide cover.
Life Assurance Scheme extended to cover pharmacy teams
Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, Keith Ridge has thanked colleagues across national pharmacy organisations and the profession as a whole for their support in helping to ensure the community pharmacy team is eligible for the new NHS and social care coronavirus life assurance scheme, announced by the Government on 27 April 2020. This provides life assurance benefits for eligible NHS and social care staff who are performing frontline work during the COVID-19 pandemic and includes: registered pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, dispensing assistants and medicine counter assistants. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Association of Pharmacy Technicians in the UK have published a joint statement.
COVID-19: 14th May round-up for primary care
NHS Volunteer Responders: Practical guide for primary care and community health professionals
With over 550,000 NHS Volunteer Responders ready to help those who need that bit of extra support, a practical guide has been published to help primary care and community health colleagues to understand the opportunities that this scheme offers.
National flu immunisation programme 2020/21
In light of COVID-19, it is more important than ever that effective plans are in place for the 2020/21 flu season to protect those at risk, prevent ill-health and minimise further impact on the NHS and social care. We have published a letter setting out which groups are eligible for the flu vaccination programme this autumn and the actions that commissioners and providers of the flu vaccine programme should take to prepare. We recognise that delivering the flu immunisation programme is likely to be more challenging because of the impact of COVID-19. Further guidance will be issued about how to manage the immunisation programme to reflect circumstances nearer the planned start of the programme in September 2020.
COVID-19: 15th May round-up for primary care
Resumption of Market Entry activity
NHS England and NHS Improvement and Primary Care Support England suspended market entry applications from 25 March 2020 to allow staff who work on these tasks to be redeployed to functions which have higher priority during the current Covid-19 pandemic. As part of its overall recovery plan to restore services paused during the lockdown, staff are now being returned to their Market Entry roles and resuming work to process applications.
As of 1 June 2020 it is expected that the full Market Entry function will be restored. However, it is likely that some applications may still take longer than the regulatory timescales to process as Market Entry teams work through the backlog of applications.
Coronavirus outbreak indemnity
The updated FAQs published by NHS Resolution on coronavirus outbreak indemnity include information which is relevant to community pharmacists, including those returning to the profession to help with the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Please refer to question 11 in the FAQs for full details on how indemnity insurance and cover may be applied.
