Contractors asked to share experiences of patient abuse

Pharmacy owners have been asked to share experiences of patient abuse towards them or their teams by Community Pharmacy England (CPE), ahead of the negotiators first committee meeting of 2026.

More than half of pharmacy staff (54%) reported that abuse from patients is a serious concern in the 2025 Pharmacy Pressures Survey. CPE said it had received ‘further reports’ since then from Local Pharmaceutical Committees (LPCs) and wanted to quantify the extent of this issue.

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Pharmacy owners can participate by completing this short poll by Thursday 22 January. This survey is for community pharmacy owners only – CCA multiple branches do not need to respond as their head offices have been contacted separately.

CPE recently recommended three actions for pharmacy owners facing any type of abuse from patients:

• Call the police, who can provide appropriate support and take action where necessary;
• Refuse to dispense the prescription;
• Contact the LPC, who may be able to assist in handling the situation locally.

CPE has also produced posters highlighting the importance of treating pharmacy team members with respect and said it would ‘keep working to raise awareness of the issue and pushing for other measures to help pharmacy owners and their teams’.

Last month, The Pharmacist heard from contractor Kevin Simpson about repeated instances of theft, burglary and abuse in his seven pharmacies.

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‘There’s a level of frustration among patients – about treatment they are unable to receive or about health issues that are not being dealt with appropriately – and I think that can spill over into anger, lead to abusive comments and, in rare circumstances, attempted aggression,’ Mr Simpson said.

Chair of Tees Valley Local Pharmaceutical Committee (LPC), Peter Horrocks, expressed similar concerns. ‘I have seen a worsening situation since we came out of the pandemic. When businesses opened back up again, there was clearly pressure on the whole healthcare system and people seemed to take out their frustrations on pharmacy teams.’

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In August, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) found that around nine in 10 (88%) pharmacies across the UK had seen an increase in cases of shoplifting in the last year.

The survey of around 500 pharmacies also found that 87% of had seen a rise in aggressive and intimidating behaviour towards pharmacy teams, and 22% had witnessed physical assault to staff.