Have your say on pharmacy services in Lewisham (PNA 2022)

To help Lewisham Council to prepare an assessment of the current and future needs of local people for pharmacy services, we asked you to tell us how your local pharmacy (also called a chemist) is giving you the things that you need. For example, your prescription, getting advice on treating minor health concerns and healthy living and/or essential vaccination.

Overall, 129 participants completed the survey, and more than 98% were Lewisham residents. Most of the respondents were from SE6 (postcode) or SE13. Majority of the respondents were female (78%) and age group of 45-74 (66%). About 59% of the respondents identified themselves as White British. Around 31% of the respondents consider themselves to have a disability and Hidden disability: Diabetes was declared from 64% of the respondents who said to have a disability.

The survey findings were as follows:

• The majority (95%) of the respondents use a pharmacy in Lewisham. Using a pharmacy one a month was the most common usage by the respondents (50%).
• Most of the respondents said they use the local pharmacy to collect prescribed medication (97%). Many used their local pharmacy for advice (33%) and to buy medication that doesn’t need a prescription (over the counter medicines) (58%).
• More than half of the respondents use the same pharmacy on a regular basis (73%).
• More than half of the respondents usually walk to their pharmacy (78%), and it takes no more than 10 minutes (66%)
• A quarter of the respondents said there is a more convenient or closer pharmacy that they do not use (33%).
• For weekdays, mornings (36%) and afternoon (31%) were the most convenient time for respondents to access as pharmacy.
• For Saturday, mornings (63%) and afternoon (28%) were the most convenient time for respondents to access as pharmacy.
• For Sunday, mornings (47%) and afternoon (27%) were the most convenient time for respondents to access as pharmacy.
• Collecting prescriptions (91%) or repeat prescriptions (93%), buying over the counter medicines (93%) and advice from your pharmacist (91%) were the most selected services that the respondents have used from the pharmacy.
• Most of the respondents wanted to have different public health and/or clinical services offered by the pharmacy, however, services that were not sure or not wanted by the majority of respondents were needle exchange (no: 18%, don’t know: 51%), stopping smoking/nicotine replacement therapy (no: 24%, don’t know: 35%) and supervised consumption of methadone and buprenorphine (no: 22%, don’t know: 46%).
• Majority of the respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the opening times (79%), consultation rooms (42%), and medicines review and advice (47%).

We used your feedback to help develop our draft of the Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) which is now available to review from this link (https://consultation.lewisham.gov.uk/community-services/lewishampna/).

We are now at the second stage of our consultation. A Public Consultation is being undertaken from 30th August 2022 to 28th October 2022, to seek the views of members of the public and other stakeholders, on whether they agree with the contents of this Draft Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment Report and whether it addresses issues that they consider relevant to the provision of pharmaceutical services. We would like you to give us your views on the draft PNA report by the 28th October. The feedback will be reported and reflected in the final revised Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment Report, in November 2022.