Oncology Pharmacy Workforce, related to the delivery of Systemic Anti-Cancer Treatment services (SACT) to cancer patients across Wessex

This project was funded by HEE SE Cancer and Diagnostics programme.

The oncology pharmacy workforce is integral to national, regional, and local plans including personalisation of medicine, transformation of NHS pharmacy aseptic services across England and the move to providing SACT closer to home.

WCA met with the Wessex oncology pharmacy workforce and HEE representatives to explore any challenges facing the existing pharmacy workforce. Across the 6 Trusts there were challenges with recruitment and retention of skilled pharmacists, technicians, and support workers – most Trusts had several vacancies that were difficult to fill and although the teams continued to deliver their services, the workforce was surviving rather than thriving and potentially not equipped to support future developments.

Purpose of Project

To identify workforce challenges and solutions within oncology pharmacy services across Wessex.

Key activities

• A virtual Star workshop was held in September 2023 with members of the oncology pharmacy workforce representing all 6 Wessex acute trusts, HEE and ICS. The workshop identified an ambitious 34 potential projects. These were then prioritised by WCA, HEE, Systems pharmacy leads and Trust pharmacy teams. Not all projects were supported or were within the control of the partners supporting this work.
• A Steering Group was set up to provide governance and oversight of the project.

Project Outputs

Outputs from prioritised projects identified through the STAR workshop include:

• Infogramme produced to demonstrate the wide variety of roles carried out by the oncology pharmacy workforce
• Filming of oncology pharmacy staff for careers page on WCA website
• Workforce survey questionnaire was sent to WCA oncology pharmacy staff. A total of 38 responses were received across all Trusts. View survey results here
• Real time baseline staff data for the oncology pharmacy workforce across WCA was collected to show all grades of staff in post, WTE for all posts and number of vacancies. The data was completed in January 2023
• Career pathway produced for both clinical and aseptic oncology pharmacy workforce
• Data collected from March and April 2023 and 2022 for 4 Trusts of HIOW to show the number of prescriptions (not items) pharmacy approved, number of unique patients, number of patients scheduled for ‘treatment’ and the percentage of prescriptions pharmacy approved on the same date as their treatment
• Network pharmacist group to be re-established
• Scope feasibility of setting up regional training for accountable/deputy accountable pharmacists
• Oncology Pharmacy Workforce Transformation Case Studies (in progress)

Thanks should be given to the WCA SACT Closer to Home team for their support for this work and interdependency between both projects.

 

Further Information

For further information please contact Kathy Cooke, Workforce Programme Manager for Wessex Cancer Alliance – Kathy.cooke@wca.uhs.nhs.uk