C+D Awards submissions open for pharmacy teams
The Chemist+Druggist Awards is now accepting submissions from across community pharmacy. The annual awards recognise work done by pharmacy teams, individuals, and services throughout the sector.
What happened
C+D opened its awards submission period this week, inviting entries from community pharmacy across the UK. The announcement came ahead of the weekend and included a message from the publication's editor-in-chief, James Halliwell, who joined C+D in February 2024.
Halliwell brought 15 years of business journalism to the role and has spoken about building the relationship between C+D and its readers. The awards sit within a publication that has been reporting on community pharmacy since 1859, making it one of the longest-running sources of trade news in the sector.
C+D operates as part of C&D Intelligence U.K. Limited.
Why it matters
For anyone working in or training within community pharmacy right now, awards like these carry more weight than they might first appear to. They document the quality of work happening on the ground — in dispensaries, consultation rooms, and behind pharmacy counters — at a time when the sector is under significant pressure.
If you're a trainee pharmacist on placement, or a pre-registration candidate completing your training year, the pharmacy you're working in may well be eligible to enter. That matters for a few reasons.
First, awards entries often require teams to articulate what they do well and why. That process — sitting down and identifying what makes a service genuinely good — is useful for anyone learning the profession. It forces reflection on patient outcomes, team communication, and the standards that separate adequate care from excellent care. These are exactly the kinds of questions the GPhC expects pharmacists to hold themselves to, not just during training but throughout their careers.
Second, being part of a team that enters — and certainly one that wins — gives you something concrete to talk about. Job interviews, portfolio reviews, and professional development conversations all benefit from specific examples. "We entered the C+D Awards and were recognised for our medicines optimisation work" is a stronger sentence than a general claim about caring about patient safety.
Third, it's worth paying attention to which categories exist and which types of work get recognised. Trade awards in any sector tend to reflect what that sector values. Watching what community pharmacy celebrates tells you something about where the profession sees its own strengths — and where it wants to go.
For pharmacy students and pre-reg candidates who are spending a lot of time focused inward on revision and clinical knowledge, the C+D Awards is a reminder that pharmacy is also a profession with a public identity, a community, and a culture. Understanding that culture is part of becoming a professional, not a distraction from it.
GPhC exam relevance
The awards themselves don't map directly onto GPhC Common Registration Assessment content. But the thinking behind them does.
The GPhC's standards for pharmacy professionals emphasise person-centred care, taking responsibility for your own professional development, and contributing to the improvement of services. Awards nominations — whether your team submits one or you simply read about the entries — put those standards into a real-world context.
When the assessment asks you to reason through a scenario involving a dispensing error, a difficult patient interaction, or a service improvement question, it's drawing on the same professional values that good awards entries demonstrate. The connection isn't about knowing the awards exist. It's about understanding what excellence looks like in practice.
Reading C+D regularly, including coverage of awards entries and winners, gives you a clearer picture of how pharmacy teams handle complex situations. That context supports better reasoning in the exam, even if it never appears as a direct question.
What's next
If you're working in a community pharmacy, speak to your superintendent or pharmacy manager about whether an entry makes sense. Even if your team decides not to submit, the conversation about what you'd write is worthwhile.
For candidates not yet in a position to enter, keep an eye on C+D's coverage as the awards cycle progresses. Finalist and winner announcements tend to spotlight genuine examples of pharmacy practice — the sort of case studies that sharpen your understanding of what good looks like.
You can find submission details directly on the C+D website.
Source: Chemist+Druggist — https://www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/news/ahead-of-the-weekend-the-cd-awards-is-open-watch-the-video-YASAMUURNBFDHC24RKQKJQ52BM/