Embedding pharmacists in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) has improved appointment attendance and reduced wait times for medication review within a Scottish health board, according to Michael Mitchell, CAMHS advanced clinical pharmacist at NHS Lanarkshire.
During a speech at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Scotland Conference 2025, held in Glasgow on 22 August 2025, Mitchell told attendees that the average time a patient waits from prescriber referral to their first medication review had reached just under 7 weeks since pharmacists took over medication reviews — down from the CAMHS team’s self-imposed target of 12 weeks.
Mitchell pointed out that NHS Lanarkshire was one of the first health boards in Scotland to embed full-time prescribing pharmacists into the CAMHS team. “The plan was for pharmacists to take over the medication reviews of patients sitting in psychiatry caseloads, and to free up psychiatry time to see the most complex patients and to do tasks that were reserved for psychiatry alone,” he said.
“The overall goal was simple: increase prescribing capacity, reduce wait times and make a difference.”
According to a snapshot of data from between February and April 2025, the pharmacy team had 394 patients on their caseloads. In that time, Mitchell said that the pharmacy team offered 482 appointments, “70% of which were titrating ADHD medication, which is one of the most time-intensive appointments for prescribers within CAMHS”.
He added that 93% of pharmacist appointments offered were attended — up from a 74% attendance rate during the same period in 2024.
Extrapolating the data to one year, Mitchell said there were an additional 2,000 patient appointments that “would not have been offered had we not been in post”.
“We also discharged 19 patients, representing appropriate throughput in the system,” he said.
The pharmacists also support the wider team in medicines education, handling medicines shortages and provision of designated prescribing practitioners.
Mitchell emphasised that these pharmacists are “not assistants, but independent active prescribers” who “understand, connect with and advocate for young people”.
The response from young people to the pharmacists “proves we are bringing something additional to patient care,” Mitchell said, noting that one parent said their child “now enjoys coming to CAMHS”.