Job responsibilities
JOB OVERVIEW
Responsible for supporting the partners in implementing
effective medicine management within the practice, identifying areas for
improvement, and initiating and managing change.
Develop and manage a medicines management plan and deliver
patient services as determined by practice policy and local and national
guidance.
Develop the medicines team, including delivery of training, in
order to maximise cost-effective prescribing and improve the quality of patient
care.
Job Role - may include the following:
Management of medicines at discharge from hospital
To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals,
intermediate care and into care homes, including identifying and rectifying
unexplained changes and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure
patients receive the medicines they need post discharge.
Set up and manage systems to ensure continuity of medicines
supply to high-risk groups of patients (eg, those with medicine compliance aids
or those in care homes).
Risk stratification
Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from
medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches. This might include
risks that are patient related, medicine related, or both.
Unplanned hospital admissions
Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with
unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual
patient reviews.
Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these
medicines to high-risk patient groups.
Repeat prescribing
Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy.
Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by
reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines
reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review to the GP.
Telephone and patient facing
medicines support
Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions,
queries and concerns about their medicines.
Hold clinics for patients requiring face-to-face medicines use
reviews (MURs) ie, advise about medicines and adherence support.
Medication review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce
recommendations for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Care home medication reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations
for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines
ordering and administration.
Domiciliary clinical medication review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce
recommendations for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Long-term condition clinics
See patients with single medical problems where medicine
optimisation is required (eg, COPD, asthma).
Make recommendations to GPs for medicine improvements.
Service development
Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and
implementation of new services that have medicinal components (eg, advise on
treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).
Care Quality Commission
Work with the practice manager and GPs to ensure the practice is
compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
Undertake risk assessment and management and ensure compliance
with medicines legislation.
Public health
To contribute to public health campaigns, including flu
vaccinations and adult immunisation programmes.
Cost saving programmes
Review potential changes to medicines (switches) designed to
save on medicine costs where a medicine or product with lower acquisition cost
is now available.
Medicine information to practice staff and patients
Answers all medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice
staff and patients with queries about medicines.
Information management
Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight
issues and risks to support decision making.
Medicines quality improvement
Undertake simple audits of prescribing in areas directed by the
GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the
practice team.
Training
Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on
therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary
recommendations
Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economys
RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be
prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber
drugs).
Assist practices in setting and maintaining a practice formulary
that is hosted on the practices computer system.
Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment
guidance.
Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing
messages.
Medicines safety
Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts,
product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
