News from NPPG April 2026

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Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the Spring 2026 edition of the NPPG newsletter. I hope you continue to find these updates helpful and engaging.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to our recent member survey. Your feedback is extremely valuable, and we have carefully reviewed all responses. The insights you shared are helping to shape our priorities and inform the workplans for the coming year.

At our March committee meeting, we held a workshop to identify several key areas of focus for NPPG going forward.

National Workforce Standards remain a major priority to support safe patient care. As well as developing new standards we will advocate for them to be embedded within national frameworks and commissioning arrangements, ensuring appropriate recognition of specialist and consultant pharmacists, as well as paediatric pharmacy technician roles.

Medicines Safety continues to be a core focus for the group. We will maintain our work to support national standardisation and provide practical support for the implementation of medicines safety initiatives.

Education and Training is a key reason you join NPPG, and we will continue to build on our offer. In particular, we will consider how best to support the development needs of experienced pharmacists and further opportunities for pharmacy technicians.

Research is another important area for you. We want to support members in starting & developing research capability and will explore alternative approaches to enable greater access to research opportunities and funding.

Member Engagement remains central to our work. We are committed to ensuring members feel informed, connected, and able to maximise the benefits of NPPG membership.

Finally, we recognise the importance of ensuring a sustainable financial future for NPPG. Over the coming year we will review expenditure and explore opportunities to generate additional income to support the organisation’s long-term stability.

Thank you for your continued support and engagement with NPPG.

Best wishes,

Chloe Benn
Chair, NPPG

Upcoming sessions, and how to register  here

The latest safety bulletin has been published It, together with previous bulletins, can be found at https://safety.rcpch.ac.uk/safety-ebulletin/

Click here for more topics

NPPG stand representatives

Agnieszka Sadowska-Koszela (Evelina London Children’s Hospital)

Lorraine Mellon (Royal Hospital for Children)

Courtney Edrich (Alder Hey Children’s Hospital)

Summary

Overall, we really enjoyed the experience and felt we gained a lot out of it. It was really great to not only network, but to spend some time together reflecting on practice.

We had some great engagement and fantastic feedback

  • Conference attendees were really supportive of the Pharmacy Technician Special Interest Group.
  • A lot of conference attendees took away membership posters to display in their area of workplace.
  • We were able to converse with Pharmacy Technicians not based in paediatric specific workplaces, who were keen to learn more about paediatrics, and were grateful to learn more about a paediatric network (e.g. Pharmacy Technicians working with the military of defence).
  • We believe we will receive an uptake of new members following the conference (we currently have 50+ members).

Myself, Aga and Lorraine were able to spend some time brainstorming some ideas on how to progress our Specials Interest Group and wished to feedback to the NPPG team for their insights/thoughts.

  • Produce/signpost to educational resources/fact sheets.
  • Produce SIG committee member biographies for inclusion on the website.
  • Pharmacy Technician specific competency packs/guides?

Imminent Plans

  • Invite Pharmacy Technicians to a ‘meet and greet’ virtual session – aim to host in October/November
    • As we have quite a few members now, we may need to split over two sessions, giving members an opportunity to attend during the day and evening.
    • Purpose of the meet and greet will be to introduce ourselves and the group and offer members an opportunity to tell us about themselves, explore any barriers faced and find out what members would like to gain from membership. In addition, this would be a great opportunity to engage to find out what members would like to see from study sessions/education resources.
  • Email all members to ensure they have signed up to the NHS networks place.
    • This will be a great space to highlight resources to members (e.g. SPS pages, procurement issues, sharing of local practice, medication safety).
  • Email the connections made at the conference to thank them for their time and interest and let them know we are here.

Courtney Edrich
Specialist Accredited Medicines Information Pharmacy Technician
Medicines Information Unit, Pharmacy Department, Alder Hey Children’s NHS foundation trust

The study aims to characterize the variability in concentrations of oral liquid medicines (OLMs) dispensed in primary care in England.- https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bcp.70518

A paper on ‘Comparative Sensory Evaluation of Pediatric Liquid Omeprazole Formulations Available in the UK’ has been published.- https://doi.org/10.1007/s40261-026-01548-w

Click here for the latest from the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD)

You can view all the recent topics of discussion here

NPPG has various social media outlets. These are updated regularly with news and information. They are as follows (click the name to access);

NPPG Administrator, Suite 213, Boundary House, London  W7 2QE

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