Why we ask
Every community pharmacy in England is required to run an annual patient questionnaire as part of the NHS Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework. We publish the results and act on them.
It is a genuinely useful exercise. Patients tell us things they would never raise at the counter, and several changes to how we work have come directly from survey comments.
What the survey covers
The questionnaire asks about your experience of the pharmacy, including:
- How easy it is to speak to a pharmacist and get advice
- Waiting times for prescriptions and whether items were in stock
- The cleanliness, layout and accessibility of the premises
- Privacy, and whether you knew a consulting room was available
- How well staff explained your medicines and treatment
- Which of our services you knew about, and which you had never heard of
- Whether you would recommend us
Taking part
Paper questionnaires are available in the pharmacy throughout the survey period, with a sealed box to return them to. You can also ask a member of staff for a copy at any time of year, or email your feedback to [email protected].
Taking part is entirely voluntary and completely anonymous unless you choose to give your name. Nothing you say affects the care you receive.
Results and what changes
We analyse the responses, write an action plan and display a summary in the pharmacy. The report and action plan are available on request, and we are happy to talk them through.
Where the survey identifies something we can fix, we fix it and say so. Where something is outside our control, for example national medicine shortages, we explain why rather than pretend otherwise.
Feedback outside the survey
You do not need to wait for a survey. Tell any member of the team, call us on 0208 840 4464, or email [email protected].
Compliments matter too. If a member of staff has gone out of their way for you, we would like to know so we can pass it on.
If you want to raise a formal complaint rather than give feedback, our complaints procedure sets out how we handle it and who to escalate to.
How we handle your responses
Completed questionnaires are stored securely and used only to review and improve our services. Anonymised results may be shared with NHS England as part of our contractual reporting.
We do not use survey responses for marketing and we do not sell them. If you give us your contact details so we can respond, we use them for that purpose only.