Job responsibilities
The post holder is a member of the Primary Care Network (PCN) Additional Roles team providing Pharmacy support to the network practices. 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 in our Practices.
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.
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.
Job Responsibilities
- Work with the Clinical Pharmacists and Clinicians in accordance with agreed practice prescribing standard operating procedures.
- Process repeat medication requests, including the conversion of acute requests to repeat medicines, changing quantities of medicines. Processing prescriptions in line with agreed clinical protocols and within your competency.
- As determined by the PCN, support medication reviews/monitoring and medicines reconciliation post discharge (or other transfer of care) and synchronizing medicines for patients especially if transferring between care settings, linking with local community pharmacists.
- Undertake patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with patients.
- Support Clinicians and Clinical Pharmacists in Structured Medication Reviews (SMR) i.e. organise necessary monitoring tests prior to SMR.
- Manage shared care protocols and liaise with Clinical Pharmacist for more complex patients.
- To develop and maintain medicines related communication to all practice staff.
- To assist with the development and review of medicines audits.
- Provide contact for patients and colleagues with medication queries.
- Support with project work/prescribing initiatives/clinical audits under the support of the pharmacist.
- Liaise with clinicians and staff to resolve prescribing queries.
- To support the management and development of the prescribing systems to ensure safe, effective, and quality prescribing within member practices in the network.
Key tasks
Prescribing
- Dealing with medication queries including acute medication requests, patient medication and prescription queries. This may involve removing unwanted items, checking review dates, ensuring necessary blood tests, and monitoring have been carried out, prescription synchronization etc.
- Communicating with patients/carers and members of the healthcare team including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and receptionists.
- Liaising with local pharmacies and hospitals regarding prescription queries and helping to ensure optimum therapy and to ensure a smooth transition from Secondary to primary care.
- Answer ad hoc medication drug queries from GPs, nurses, and other healthcare professionals within the post holders expertise.
- Updating of medication received from secondary care on the patient medical record, where appropriate.
- To problem solve issues related to prescribing.
- To support the lead GP for prescribing with clinical administration, projects, and audits to improve services and initiatives to enhance safety, quality, and cost effectiveness of prescribing (e.g., Prescribing Quality Scheme, MHRA updates etc.).
- To work as an autonomously and be capable of prioritising work whilst maintaining accurate and timely records.
Other Duties
- To facilitate and participate in multidisciplinary meetings and education sessions related to prescribing topics.
- To always keep professional up to date and to meet the General Pharmaceutical Council standards for continuing professional development to maintain professional registration.
- To ensure that all information is recorded accurately using computer systems and paper if required.
- To ensure maintenance of accurate patient records and ensure all relevant information is documented in the patients medical record in a timely manner.
- This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the post holder may be required to undertake other duties that fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with line manager and clinical pharmacist.
- Support initiatives for antimicrobial stewardship to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.
- Providing leadership for medicines optimisation systems across the PCN, supporting practices with a range of services to get best value from medicines by encouraging and implementing Electronic Prescriptions, safe repeat prescribing systems, and timely monitoring and management of high-risk medicines.
