Job responsibilities
Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting programme of transformation to develop a new model of care which addresses our ambition to deliver person-centred, coordinated care across the district. The Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice model is supported by the direction of national policy including the Five Year Forward View and GP Forward View where there is a need to better utilise the role of pharmacy within primary care to pro-actively help patients stay safe and well and out of hospital as well as helping to reduce the demands on general practice.
Pharmacy technicians play an important role, complementing clinical pharmacists, community pharmacists and other members of the PCN multi-disciplinary team. Pharmacy technicians are different to clinical pharmacists as they are not able to prescribe or make clinical decisions, instead working under supervision to ensure effective and efficient use of medicines. Pharmacy technicians core role responsibilities will cover clinical, and technical and administrative categories.
The purpose of the role is to lead improvements to maximise safe, cost effective best practice in prescribing to improve the quality of patient care. The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in General Practice, including promotion of repeat dispensing and online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.
In addition, the post holder will be responsible for encouraging the development of better understanding of the principles of medicines optimisation throughout the practice teams and promoting good practice in line with therapeutic developments. This will involve assisting the PCN in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives.
Your responsibilities are but are not limited to;
1.To work with GPs and clinical pharmacist to implement changes to prescriptions to records in response to written requests on prescribers instructions
2.Support timely repeat prescribing
a.Liaising with community and hospital pharmacies regarding patients and their medications
b.Manage the requests for urgent repeat prescriptions received by reception
c.Manage the alignment prescription requests from patients and care homes
3.To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care. After clinical review conducted by the GPs or Clinical Pharmacist ensure patients receive up to date repeat slips and are booked for further blood test, dose titration or medication counselling appointments.
4.Familiarise yourself with practice routines and working methods for prescribing and some practice systems e.g. Near Patient Testing. Understand QOF and practice systems for ensuring safe prescribing.
5.Work to improve medication optimisation by working with GPs and Clinical Pharmacist to optimise prescribing, for example communicating approved medication changes to patients and updating medications list.
6.Be available to staff, doctors and clinical pharmacist to provide support on medicines management and liaise with community pharmacies to improve practice prescribing systems, patient care and costs.
a.Track EPS prescriptions and direct to relevant pharmacy
b.Ensure old non-dispensed prescriptions are not dispensed by the relevant pharmacy
c.Communicate changes to regular medications for vulnerable patients (with consent) to community pharmacy to achieve continuity of care.
7.Focus on medicine availability and changing to alternative medicines when there are supply problems.
a.Communicate with the local community pharmacies to understand the supply problem and find out which alternatives are locally available for the prescribers to consider
8.Support the clinical pharmacist to promote further integration of general practice with the wider healthcare teams ,including community and hospital pharmacy, to help improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage general practice workload.
9.Proactively manage the practice response to drug recalls, including conducting patient searches and researching alternatives
10.Work with the practice manager, GPs and clinical pharmacist to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved, including inviting patients to medication reviews and taking action for those who fail to attend.
11.Promote safer prescribing by conducting the searches for audits as directed by GPs and clinical pharmacist.
12.Support the Clinical Pharmacist in Structure Medication Reviews (SMR) i.e. organise necessary monitoring tests prior to SMR
13.Undertake the Primary Care Education Pathway for clinical Pharmacy
Potential next steps for progression including those only to be undertaking following completion of CPPE pathway
1.Undertake less complex structured medicine reviews and update medicine reviews under close supervision from GPs and clinical pharmacist. Through structured medication reviews, the technician will support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste and promote self-care.
2.Ensure continuity of medicines supply to high-risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes) by being the first point of contact for community pharmacy and medication queries from care home
3.Triage the medication requests received from the care homes and refer the request to relevant practitioner, for example GP, ACP, or clinical pharmacist
4.Promotion of Electronic Repeat Dispensing and online ordering, identify suitable patients and make recommendations to the clinical pharmacist to review
5.Undertake patient facing and patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use through shared decision-making conversations with patients. For example, when requested by a GP or the clinical pharmacist, counsel a patient on a new medication to ensure safe and effective use, including DOACs.
6.Support practice reception teams in streaming general prescription requests, so as to allow GPs and clinical pharmacists to review the more clinically complex requests.
7.Contact patients who due to safety audit searches need follow-up and or a change to their medications