Independent Prescribing Pharmacist Salary

As Independent Prescribing Pharmacists working in GPs surgeries is a relatively new position, there is limited data on what salaries a pharmacist can expect. 

The closest role which has the most data is an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP), these experienced nurses achieve an average of £22ph (see below) which is similar to what a pharmacist might expect.

A brief look on jobs.nhs.uk shows positions in secondary care for prescribing pharmacists 

£0 - £10,000 (63) - Part-time.
£10,000 - £20,000 (2)
£20,000 - £30,000 (18)
£30,000 - £40,000 (55)
£40,000 - £50,000 (44)
£50,000 - £60,000 (10)
£60,000 - £70,000 (1)
£70,000 - £80,000 (0)
£80,000 - £90,000 (3)
£90,000 - £100,000 (0)

The median of this series lies between £40-60k. In comparison to pharmacists wages internationally it is no surprise that the UK ranks 7th on the most highly paid pharmacist around the world.

The argument for a higher pharmacist prescriber salary.

There should be little to no difference between a pharmacist prescriber and a doctor in a similar position. Many of the two specialities roles and responsibility overlap, in fact, there is a Cochrane review of over 45 studies that compared prescribing by doctors with prescribing by other healthcare professionals. The review found that pharmacist and nurses, in fact, have shown to have better clinical outcomes than doctors in a variety of fields including:

• Blood Pressure - patients had lower systolic blood pressure than those prescribed drugs by doctors (-5.31mmHg, 95% confidence interval [CI] -6.46 to -4.16; in 12 trials, involving 4,229 participants) 
• Cholesterol - patients had lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol than those prescribed drugs by doctors (-0.21 mmol/L, 95% CI -0.29 to -0.14; in seven trials, involving 1,469 participants).
• Diabetes - patients had lower glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c, a long-term measure of blood sugar control) than those prescribed drugs by doctors (-0.62%, 95% CI -0.85% to -0.38%; in six trials, with 775 participants).

Reference

¹ Non?medical prescribing versus medical prescribing for acute and chronic disease management in primary and secondary care: Greg Weeks, Johnson George et al. Version published: 22 November 2016 Version history. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011227.pub2 https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011227.pub2/full