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, co-ordinated care across the network. 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 will play an important role,
complementing our existing clinical pharmacist team, community pharmacists and
other members of the PCN multi-disciplinary team. Pharmacy technicians core
role responsibilities will cover clinical, and technical and administrative
categories and will undoubtedly enable greater effective and efficient use of
medicines.
As part of this role pharmacy technicians will be
expected to enrol on either the CPPE Primary Care Pharmacy Education Pathway
(PCPEP) or Medicines Optimisation in Care Homes (MOCH) as part of the
requirement of PCN DES.
Role Description
PCN Pharmacy Technicians will lead
improvements to maximise safe, cost effective best practice in prescribing to
improve the quality of patient care. Their role
includes:
Working
alongside all GP practice staff as an integrated part of the practice teams,
undertaking numerous medicines related activities.
Carry out medicine switches in GP practices in line with practice and CCG
agreed specific protocols reviewing patients records; amending records and
informing patients
Carry out housekeeping whilst in patient records e.g. dose optimisation
and medicines synchronisation
Help patients to
get the best from their medicines by supporting the delivery of clinical
pharmacy services such as medication reviews and care home reviews.
To support the
monitoring of medications in accordance with protocols and medication/patient
risk stratification tools
Deal with patient
and healthcare-related queries
Work closely with GP practices and the CCG Clinical
Pharmacy in General Practice lead
Participate in PCN meetings to improve engagement of the role of
pharmacy technician within the PCN and to promote issues relevant to
prescribing and medicines optimisation
Promotion of electronic repeat dispensing and online
ordering
Contribute to
minimising clinical risks and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.
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.
To undertake,
participate and share the outcomes of clinical audits to facilitate improvement
and changes in practice
Handle function specific information, which may be sensitive, complex or
confidential and appropriately recording, transferring and/or coordinating such
information in accordance with the Data Protection Act; Caldicott Guidelines
and the Confidentiality Code of Conduct
To be responsible for
the organisation, planning and of own workload to meet set deadlines
To utilise GP practice
clinical systems to conduct prescribing audits e.g. EMIS
Assist the PCN in
achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of
medicines optimisation initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
Clinical
- Undertake patient facing and patient supporting roles to ensure
effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with
patients;
- Carry out medicines optimisation tasks including effective medicine
administration (e.g. checking inhaler technique), supporting medication
reviews, and medicines reconciliation. Where required, utilise
consultation skills to work in partnership with patients to ensure they
use their medicines effectively; and to ensure patients are signposted to the right service if
required ie. LTC teams, GP, or other health care professionals
- With support
from the Clinical Pharmacy Team, as
determined by the PCN, undertake medication reviews and medicines
reconciliation for new care home patients and synchronising medicines for
patient transfers between care settings and linking with local community
pharmacists.
- Provide specialist expertise, where competent, to address both the
public health and social care needs of patients, including lifestyle
advice, service information, and help in tackling local health
inequalities;
- Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care
protocols and liaising with specialist pharmacists for more complex
patients;
- Support initiatives for antimicrobial stewardship to reduce
inappropriate antibiotic prescribing;
- Assist in the delivery of medicines optimisation and management
incentive schemes and patient safety audits;
- With help of the
Clinical Pharmacy Team, support the implementation of national prescribing
policies and guidance within GP practices, care homes and other primary
care settings. This will be achieved through undertaking clinical audits
(e.g. use of antibiotics), supporting quality improvement measures and
contributing to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and enhanced services;
Technical and Administrative
- Work with the PCN multi-disciplinary team to ensure efficient
medicines optimisation, including implementing efficient ordering and
return processes, and reducing wastage;
- Supervise practice reception teams in sorting and streaming general
prescription requests to allow GPs and clinical pharmacists to review the
more clinically complex requests;
- Provide leadership for medicines optimisation systems across PCNs,
supporting practices with a range of services to get the best value from
medicines by encouraging and implementing Electronic Prescriptions, safe
repeat prescribing systems, and timely monitoring and management of
high-risk medicines;
- Provide training and support on the legal, safe and secure handling
of medicines, including the implementation of the Electronic Prescription
Service (EPS); and
- Develop relationships with other pharmacy technicians, pharmacists
and members of the multi-disciplinary team to support integration of the
pharmacy team across health and social care including primary care, community
pharmacy, secondary care, and mental health
General
The postholder will:
Develop a
culture that promotes equality and values diversity. The postholder must be aware of and
committed to the Equality and Diversity policies of the appointing GP
Federation and comply with all the requirements of these policies and actively
promote Equality and Diversity issues relevant to the post.
Ensure the
principles of openness, transparency and candour are observed and upheld in all
working practices.
The post
holder will have, or acquire through training provided by the organisation, the
appropriate level of safeguarding and knowledge, skills and practice required
for the post and be aware of and comply with the organisations safeguarding
protection policies and procedures.
Ensure that
any infection prevention and control issues are reported to the line
manager/Infection Prevention and Control
Respect for Patient
Confidentiality
The post-holder should always respect patient confidentiality
and not divulge patient information unless sanctioned by the requirements of
the role.
Special Working
Conditions
The post-holder is required to travel
independently between PCN sites, and to attend meetings etc. hosted by other agencies.
Job Description
Agreement
This job description is intended to provide an
outline of the key tasks and responsibilities only. There may be other duties
required of the post-holder commensurate with the position. This description
will be open to regular review and may be amended to take into account
development within the PCN and member practices.
All members of staff should be prepared to take
on additional duties or relinquish existing duties in order to maintain the
efficient running of the PCN.