Kia ora koutou

Recently, the Pharmacy Council was pleased to be involved in a Pharmacy Sector Leaders Forum workshop to create a shared vision for the future of pharmacy. As healthcare pressures continue to build, we all need to look at what we can do differently to make positive change, and having a shared vision will help to focus and consolidate work across the sector.

We are also looking back at the information we’ve gathered in our recently released Annual Report and Demographic Report, so all our decisions are based on data. Unfortunately, some of the trends identified in these reports show that although the number of pharmacists joining the profession is increasing, it’s not increasing at the rate required to meet the needs of New Zealand’s aging population. We have also seen that complaints and notifications keep increasing year on year – you can read more about this, and what you can do to help address the problem, later in this newsletter.

You may have seen media coverage of the recent findings from Te Manawa Taki regional prescription issue audit undertaken by Bay of Plenty and Midland Community Pharmacy groups in September. You can read the report here. The main driver for this work was the increasing level of pharmacy sector concern about the nature of potentially serious issues in scripts and the risk of patient harm.

We really commend all initiatives like this that help to protect safety and highlight the work that pharmacists are doing every day across New Zealand.

These challenges are not unique to New Zealand, and the international conferences we attended recently highlighted that we are aligned with, and in some instances ahead of, many other jurisdictions. However, as part of our Regulatory Pathway work, we are going to keep challenging ourselves to make sure we’re using all the regulatory tools available in a way that supports the sector and encourages innovation.

Ngā mihi
Ming-chun Wu (Chair) and Michael Pead (Chief Executive)

The demographics of the pharmacy sector give us an important point-of-time glimpse into the pharmacy workforce and can help us track trends over the years.

You can read the entire report here, but some key points from this year include:

• On 30 June 2025, there were 4279 registered, current pharmacists in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the year prior there were 210 new pharmacists who registered with Council for the first time.
• The number of practising pharmacists increased by just 0.8 percent, a comparably small increase to that reported in the year ending 30 June 2023 (0.6 percent) and lower than the 2.4 percent growth reported last year.
• The average growth in the number of practising pharmacists over the past five years has now decreased to 1.8 percent per year, down from the 2.0 percent five-year average reported last year.
• This relatively small increase in numbers of practising pharmacists, coupled with a growing and ageing population and increasing demands on pharmacists to provide health services, means that the profession continues to face workforce capacity issues.

To get the most out of this information, we hope the sector will use the data to prompt discussion and questions about how and when pharmacists are currently working, and what needs to be addressed to ensure that New Zealanders can safely access the pharmacy care they need.

Last year, we held a consultation on raising the costs of the APC fee and disciplinary levy. This increase was due to a rise in the number and complexity of notifications we received, the need to replenish our reserves, and general inflationary pressures. In line with our commitment of 2024, we are not raising the fees for the forthcoming year (2026/27).

Regrettably, however, the factors that necessitated the fee increase last year are not relenting. We continue to experience significant cost pressures in meeting the growing number compliance and notification cases.

Last financial year, we dealt with a total of 109 complaints and notifications, up from 74 in the 2023/24 year. While these numbers are small compared to the total number of practitioners, each case can take a significant amount of time and resource to consider.

You can find out more about our processes and how costs are accrued in our communications from last year: notifications and complaints process and rising costs.

The Pharmacy Council does not receive any government funding. Under the HPCA Act 2003, all Responsible Authorities must fund its activities through the profession it regulates via an APC fee and disciplinary levy. 

A small number of practitioners are increasing costs – why can’t they pay for the disciplinary process?

We often hear that it’s unfair for everyone to be covering the costs of pharmacists who do not meet the standards of competence and fitness to practice, and that those who do wrong should pay for the disciplinary process.

When a notification is received or a complaint is considered, our approach is that we proceed through a fair process.

Requiring a practitioner who is the subject of a notification or complaint to pay upfront for an initial inquiry by Council, a possible investigation by the PCC and any subsequent prosecution by the HPDT would be almost impossible to administer. Therefore, it is more equitable to spread the cost of compliance across all pharmacists.

What can we do to reduce costs?

It’s critical that the Council continues to be notified of concerns to ensure public safety.

It is possible to reduce the costs associated with notifications and complaints when pharmacists engage proactively with the Council and are willing to reflect on and improve their practice. This helps to reduce the need for statutory action, which is where costs begin to increase significantly.

Alert us to any concerns as early as possible, so that measures can be put in place to support practitioners who may need assistance.

If you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, check out the resources available through the Pharmacy Council, PSNZ (for members), and the Mental Health Foundation.

All pharmacists must hold a current First Aid Certificate when first registering in the pharmacist scope of practice, and, if working in a patient-facing role, must maintain these skills by completing a refresher course every two years.

This is because it’s a pharmacist’s ethical and professional duty to provide emergency first aid where necessary, in line with their professional role and expertise, so our expectation is that pharmacists practising in a healthcare setting must be able to give assistance in an emergency.

We’ve refreshed our flowchart and Q&A document to help you determine what’s required, and you can read the First Aid policy here.

Intern pharmacists are required to provide Council a copy of a valid first aid training certificate when applying for registration in the Pharmacist scope of practice.

If you are a vaccinator, depending on your work and personal requirements, you will also need to make sure you renew your first aid requirements as per the Immunisation Handbook. 

An important way that pharmacists can support patients and help alleviate the pressure on GPs is by supplying pharmacist only medicines for some acute conditions.

When assessing a patient, pharmacists must differentiate between medical complaints and conditions and follow the appropriate protocol/ guidelines for the sale of pharmacist only medicines. The Pharmacy Council’s protocol document outlines all the steps required, such as the need for a face-to-face consultation, considering the appropriateness of the medicine and any side effects, and recording the sale of medicine.

Be sure that everyone in the pharmacy is across all the requirements for pharmacist only medicines. Pharmacists must have a procedure in place to ensure that pharmacy technicians and pharmacy assistants always refer patients to the pharmacist when a pharmacist only medicine is requested, or when it could be a suitable treatment for symptoms described by the patient.

Supplying pharmacist only medicines comes with a duty of care, backed up by sound clinical knowledge and following the protocol/ guidelines.

Thank you to everyone who completed our recent communications survey. It was very pleasing to see that over 60% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the amount of information, frequency, and relevance of the newsletter.

The responses also highlighted some areas we need to work on, including the tone and language we use. Most people (87%) preferred to receive the newsletter via email, but we also heard that while some people like reading the newsletter on our website, many others would prefer a PDF version. That’s an easy thing to accommodate, so from now on we’ll be using both methods.

The top four topics respondents would like to hear about were:

• Important updates about the sector (68%)
• Reminders and information about pharmacist practice (67%)
• Updates on the Pharmacy Council’s work (57%)
• Use of funds (56%)

We’ll be working on making sure we cover those topics in upcoming newsletters, and you can read a reminder about the First Aid policy and the protocol for sale of pharmacist only medicine above. Another reminder of pharmacy practice was our recent interview with Lun Shen Wong on how to nail your continuing professional development portfolio.

Once again, thanks to everyone who participated. We really value your feedback and have considered all the information. If you have any further comments or suggestions about our newsletter or other communications, please feel free to email us at [email protected].  

The Voluntary Bonding Scheme, run by Health New Zealand, encourages newly qualified health professionals to work in the community, and to increase representation of Māori and Pacific peoples within the health workforce.

The Scheme is targeted to new or recent graduates in eligible professions, including pharmacy, who are starting their career.

Those who register for and are accepted to the Scheme during annual intakes can become eligible for payments in the first three-to-five years of their career, to help repay their student loan or as top-up income.

Eligibility

You may be eligible if you have completed undergraduate qualification in 2024 and commenced internship in 2024 or 2025 OR completed undergraduate qualification in 2022 or 2023 and completed your internship in 2024.

For pharmacists, the category is geographically targeted to rural and regional Aotearoa New Zealand and excludes the urban boundaries of the six main centres (Metropolitan Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin).

Apply before applications close on Sunday 21 December 2025.

For more information, check out the Health New Zealand website.

The Ministry of Health has opened applications to join the Pharmacy Council as either a practitioner or lay person member. Appointments to the Council are made by the Associate Minister of Health for terms of up to three years.

Members can be reappointed for up to nine consecutive years, and the three current Council members are eligible for re-election.

To find out more about the role, the skills and experience needed, and how to apply, please visit the Ministry of Health website.

Applications close at 5pm on 9 December 2025.

We recently reviewed a sample of randomly chosen MyRecert portfolios from the last recertification year (between April 2024 to 31 March 2025).

This annual review is an important way for us as a regulator to have assurance that pharmacists are meeting their recertification requirements. The review is not a test or assessment, and the randomly selected pharmacists have been given feedback on their portfolios that can be used to reflect and improve.

The results reaffirmed that most pharmacists use effective professional development to maintain their competence and are meeting the recertification requirements. Most portfolios reached the expected standard, which is great, and we also saw improvements in portfolios that were reviewed a second time after not meeting the standards in 2023/24.

In late August and early September, a few members of the Pharmacy Council travelled to two conferences to find out the latest happenings in pharmacy and health regulation.

The first conference, hosted by the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) and attended by over 3,400 delegates, was focused on “Pharmacy Forward: Performance, Collaboration, and Health Transformation”.

The second conference was hosted by the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities (IAMRA) with the theme “People-focused Regulation for a Safer Global Community”.

Interestingly, similar topics kept coming up in both conferences. It seems like all regulators and health sectors internationally are dealing with the same challenges of training and retaining the workforce, how to safely and effectively integrate AI and digital health, and the need for a patient-centred approach to healthcare.

There is a current international focus on prescribing by pharmacists, though the definition of prescribing varies significantly. Forty-five countries have explicit “pharmacist prescribing” rights that range from fully independent to dependent (protocol based). Prescribing can mean many different things to different people. For example, at one end we have autonomous prescribing by pharmacists, at the other we have schemes meant to broaden access to funded medicines for populations which look more like NZ’s “pharmacist only medicines” scheme and/or funded minor ailments schemes. 

In the regulation space, there was discussion on the move towards restorative justice style remediation processes, and how emerging technologies such as AI and issues like cosmetic procedures are raising new and emerging regulatory changes.

The conferences were useful and interesting, however the main learning from both events was there does not appear to be many options in the pharmacist regulation space that Pharmacy Council is not already discussing or advancing to address the challenges the sector is facing.