Revealed: What to tell a pharmacist to get antibiotics for your sore throat

‘Tis the season for sore throats, including the irritating sore throat that just won’t go away.

But how do you know if your persistent sore chest is just a cold that just needs time to clear up, or a nasty infection that warrants antibiotics?

Now you no longer have to wait for an appointment at your impenetrable doctor’s office to find out.

NHS England’s new Pharmacy First service will allow your local pharmacists to prescribe medicines for a handful of easy-to-treat conditions, including infected bites, shingles, urinary tract infections and some sore throats.

Now MailOnline can reveal the simple test used by pharmacists to determine if your sore throat is bad enough for prescription medication.

The test – developed by NHS England – gives patients a score out of five, depending on the presence of five symptoms and how severe they are.

Symptoms include fever above 38°C, pus on the tonsils, inflamed tonsils and no cough. Patients score an extra point if they go to the pharmacist within three days of the onset of the complaints.

This is because people with symptoms that have been around for a while may have an underlying problem that requires a referral from a specialist.

NHS England’s Pharmacy First Patient Group guidance provides pharmacists with instructions on how to prescribe medicines to patients to free up GP space.

If patients score above four, pharmacists will ask how severe the pain is; if it is mild, you will be told to take paracetamol. But if the disease is severe, they can prescribe a five-day course of the usual antibiotic penicillin, provided that the patient is not allergic.

The guidance also states that before even considering treatment for a chest or throat infection, pharmacists should consider red flags for other, more serious conditions.

These include scarlet fever, glandular fever, an abscess behind the tonsils known as a sore throat and some cancers.

The test is only used for adults and children over the age of five, with the exception of pregnant women under the age of 16.

Those who are immunosuppressed and considered at ‘high risk’ of worsening health will not be eligible for the test and will instead be referred for specialist treatment.

The Pharmacy First program was launched by the government and NHS England at the end of January in an attempt to ease pressure on GP services.

Recent data from a month-long survey of people’s experiences of the NHS found that fewer than half of patients in England were able to see their GP in person.

Only a third of patients surveyed were able to visit their GP on the same day they sought care, while only a fifth said a telephone or online appointment was sufficient to address their health concerns.

It comes after more than 98 percent of GPs in England backed the British Medical Association’s (BMA) proposed industrial action to introduce a limit of 25 appointments per day per GP.

Pharmacists can now prescribe medications for a limited number of common conditions, including infected bites, shingles, urinary tract infections and some sore throats.

Helen Morgan MP and Liberal Democrat health and social care spokesperson argued that the country’s primary care services are ‘at breaking point’.

“Patients are left completely without options, but allow their problems to worsen when they cannot get the care they need,” she said.

Meanwhile, large pharmacies are facing declining workforces and financial problems, forcing many to close, a new report has found.

Seven in ten pharmacy owners also regularly report staff shortages, with a tenth forced to close temporarily, according to the research by industry body Community Pharmacy England (CPE).

The report comes after it was revealed that the number of pharmacies in England is now at its lowest level in almost two decades, with an average of seven of these essential services closing every week.

More than 1,500 have closed since 2015, leaving just 10,054 open, the National Pharmacy Association warned last month.

At this rate, numbers could fall below 10,000 for the first time since 2005, when there were 9,872.

Boots has closed branches en masse in recent months, while LloydsPharmacy has closed its doors completely.