Developing your primary care pharmacy workforce
A structured, simulation-based pathway that gives pharmacists and pharmacy technicians the knowledge and simulated experience to prepare for patient-facing primary care roles, with a reviewable record of the assessed learning they complete.
What does your organisation need to improve?
Choose an outcome to jump to the relevant evidence, delivery model and package.
Onboard new starters
A structured first pathway with realistic workflow practice.
Develop clinical reasoning
Modules linked directly to scored simulated practice and feedback.
Train technicians or prescription teams
Role-specific programmes and scope-appropriate simulation.
Provide clinical supervision
Booking, agendas, reports, reflections and evidence.
Evidence workforce development
Manager oversight, assessed-learning evidence and exports.
Standardise across multiple practices
Scaled licences, cohort reporting and implementation support.
Learning built around the decisions the work requires
Medicine in Practice built this pathway to help pharmacy professionals develop the knowledge, reasoning and simulated experience relevant to patient-facing roles in primary care or a similar setting. It helps them become patient-facing, person-centred practitioners working as part of the multidisciplinary team, improving patients' access to primary care and helping people get more from their medicines and stay well at home.
The learning carries over to related settings (Health & Justice, the armed forces, care homes and any primary-care-type service) with a little lateral thinking. It runs as an 18-month-equivalent programme for pharmacists and a 15-month-equivalent programme for pharmacy technicians, but it is self-paced, so learners fit it around a working caseload.
Why it is different: your team does not watch someone action a letter or run a review. They do it themselves, hundreds of times, with instant feedback on what was good, missed or unsafe. The platform records online learning and simulated performance, while employers retain responsibility for workplace observation and competency decisions.
Built by a working clinical pharmacy team
Medicine in Practice is the training arm of a clinical pharmacy service that runs medicines work for GP practices and PCNs. The cases your team practises here are drawn from the ones ours meets in real primary care.
Led by Laura Billyard, our founder and clinical lead
Clinical direction is led by Laura Billyard, a pharmacist and independent prescriber (MPharm, University of Nottingham) and Independent Pharmacist of the Year 2016. She has spent over a decade across community pharmacy, general practice and PCNs, was a CPPE education supervisor training primary care pharmacists on the national pathways, and sits on the UKCPA Primary Care Pain Committee. Formal clinical approval is a separate, version-specific control. Its current status is published in the clinical governance register.
What they actually learn
Not a reading list. 95 in-depth modules across eight areas of primary care practice, each tied to a fictional lab where the learner makes realistic decisions online.
Knowledge: 95 modules across the work of the role
Simulation: where they apply it
Letter actioning
Work a real-style inbox of 1353+ discharges, clinic letters and results: reconcile, code, arrange monitoring, escalate.
Medication review
Structured reviews of complex, polypharmacy and frailty patients, with model answers.
Simulated patient calls
Phone a simulated patient by voice or text: they only reveal information when asked the right questions.
Clinic and clinical-system simulator
A realistic GP clinical system: go and find your work, appointments, tasks, scripts to sign and messages from other clinics.
Results inbox
Interpret bloods, classify urgency, action and code: the daily reality of a primary care pharmacist.
Prescriptions and consultation notes
Triage the signing queue safely, and write consultation notes checked against a documentation rubric.
By the end, they can
- Develop consultation skills and support shared decision-making
- Take on clinical, patient-facing roles
- Work as part of a multidisciplinary team
- Lead on person-centred medicines optimisation and integration into the wider team
- Practise within a professional clinical network with access to appropriate supervision
Why should pharmacists & pharmacy technicians take part?
The grounding to work safely and provide person-centred care with confidence.
The confidence to take on new clinical roles as services and demand shift.
Clear leadership behaviours in how they approach patient care.
Working as part of the primary care team, alongside the partners who support them.
Equipped to develop other members of the wider team.
A clearer, evidenced contribution to patient care.
A structured route to advance in clinical pharmacy service delivery.
The return on the investment
A more capable pharmacy workforce is one of the highest-value things a practice or PCN can build. Employers and the wider system gain:
Built to help teams make transitions safer as people move between hospital, GP and community.
Trains teams to reduce medicines-related harms and sharpen monitoring of high-risk drugs.
A team that documents, codes and hands over clearly.
Equips teams to catch problems earlier, in the community, before they escalate.
Helps more care be delivered safely, closer to where people live.
As part of a joined-up, integrated programme of care.
Structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation, done to standard.
Matched to what is expected at each stage
A clear Foundation to Practitioner to Advanced Practice route for pharmacists, plus a dedicated pharmacy technician programme scoped to the technician role.
Foundation · Safe under supervision
Get safe, confident and useful in a primary care team.
Who: Pharmacy technicians, newly-qualified pharmacists, and anyone new to general practice / PCN work.
Practitioner · Independent within scope
Run reviews and clinics independently within your scope.
Who: Established primary care pharmacists and senior technicians taking on clinical caseload.
Advanced Practice · Leading complex care
Lead complex care, prescribe, and develop the service and others.
Who: Advanced/senior primary care pharmacists, independent prescribers and clinical leads.
Pharmacy Technician Programme
For pharmacy technicians in general practice, PCNs, care homes and community pharmacy.
A complete primary-care track built around the technician role, across three development levels (Foundation, Developing and Advanced). It is scope-mapped so learners can distinguish routine process work from decisions that need a pharmacist or prescriber. One purchase unlocks all three levels.
How we make it stick
Learn by doing
Simulation, not slides. Every concept is paired with a task the learner performs and is scored on.
Safe to fail
Fictional patients and records mean mistakes are learning, not harm, with feedback on what was unsafe and why.
Assessed learning
Certification requires passing an assessment and minimum performance in the simulated labs. It records more than attendance without replacing workplace assessment.
Supervision-ready
A built-in CPD log and supervised-practice portfolio for real sign-off, plus an optional supervisor dashboard.
Version-controlled review
Content carries a hash, source record and review status. A clinical change invalidates earlier approval, and the live governance register shows what is approved or still pending. Always verify against current guidance before acting.
Mapped to professional capabilities
Every activity maps to our 9-domain framework, so certificates clearly state the curriculum areas and simulated activities completed.
Independent training
Bring it to your team
Licence seats for a practice, PCN or training hub, with the manager dashboard to review progress across the team. Optional supervision and implementation support are available for Network Contract DES delivery.
Prefer to see it first? Try a Practice Lab free · Browse the full curriculum