On Thursday (16 January), the RPS Scotland Team held a drop-in event on access to patient records for pharmacists in the community, for MSPs at The Scottish Parliament. The event was kindly sponsored by Brian Whittle MSP.

We provided MSPs with an overview of the access to patient records which community pharmacists currently have, and explained how providing community pharmacists with full read and write access to an integrated shared patient record would be transformational for patient care.

We asked members to raise this issue in relevant parliamentary debates and to consider submitting parliamentary questions on this issue to encourage Scottish Government to put funding and timescales in place to ensure community pharmacists have full read and write access to patient records as soon as possible. This is especially important as from 2026 all new pharmacists will be prescriber-ready. So these pharmacists can make the most of their skills, access to full patient records will be vital.

The RPS team spoke to 21 MSPs, including the Minister for Public Health who has responsibility for Community Pharmacy in her portfolio. 

All MSPs were extremely knowedgable about the issue and supportive of our call. MSPs offered their support to help us lobby Scottish Government to action on the issued we raised.

Thank you to all of the MSPs who took the time to discuss this important issue with us.