Job responsibilities
Job
purpose/summary:
The post
holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries,
supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice.
In this role they will be supported by a senior clinical pharmacist who will
develop, manage and mentor them. The post holder will work as part of a
multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role. The post holder will take
responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice
and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with
complex polypharmacy.
The post
holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to
prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat
prescription system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicines
reconciliation on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing,
providing expertise in clinical medicines advice while addressing both public
and social care needs of patient in the GP practice (s).
The post
holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality
improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and
enhanced services. The post holder will ensure that the practice integrates
with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve
patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage
workload. The role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and
operational efficiencies so requires motivation and passion to deliver
excellent service within general practice.
The post
holder holds a non-medical prescribing qualification.
Main Roles & Responsibilities
Patient
facing Long-term condition Clinics. See (where appropriate) patients
with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is
required (e.g. COPD, asthma). Review the on-going need for each medicine, a
review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their
medicines taking ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e.
medicines optimisation). Make appropriate recommendations to GPs for medicine
improvement.
Structured
Medication Review. Undertake clinical medication reviews with
patients face to face or virtually and produce recommendations for nurses
and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Management
of common/minor/self-limiting ailments. Managing caseload of patients with
common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice
and limits of competence. Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to
GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
Patient
facing medicines support. Provide patient facing clinics for those
with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice
Telephone
medicines support. Provide a telephone help line for patients
with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
Medicine
information to practice staff and patients.
Answers relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice
staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with
queries about medicines. Suggesting and recommending solutions. Providing
follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
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 highrisk patient groups.
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 highrisk groups
of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care
homes).
Signposting.
Ensure that patients are
referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level
of care within an appropriate period of time e.g. pathology results,
common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc.
Repeat
prescribing. Manage and support the repeat prescribing process by reviewing
patient requests for repeat prescriptions, prescribing and reviewing
medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review.
Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.
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.
Service
development. Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and
implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. Enhanced
access to care homes ,advice on treatment pathways and patient information
leaflets).
Information
management. Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight
issues and risks to support decision making.
Medicines
quality improvement. Undertake clinical audits of prescribing
in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in
conjunction with the practice team.
Medicines
safety. Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts,
product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
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 seeing 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.
Education
and Training Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on
therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
Care
Quality Commission Work with the general practice team to
ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are
involved.
Public
health To support public health campaigns. To provide specialist
knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.
Collaborative
Working Relationships
Recognises the roles of other colleagues
within the organisation and their role to patient care
Demonstrates use of appropriate
communication to gain the co-operation of relevant stakeholders (including
patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other
NHS/private organisations e.g. CCGs)
Demonstrates ability to work as a member of
a team
Is able to recognise personal limitations
and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary
Actively work toward developing and
maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the
practice and locality
Foster and maintain strong links with all
services across locality
Explores the potential for collaborative
working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships
Demonstrates ability to integrate general
practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams
Liaises with CCG colleagues including CCG
Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient
care and benefit
Liaises with CCG pharmacists and Heads of
Medicines Management/ Optimisation to benefit from peer support
Liaises with other stakeholders as needed
for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to:
o
Patients
o
GPs, nurses and other practice staff
o
Other healthcare professionals including CCG
pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social
care teams and dieticians etc.
o
Locality / GP prescribing lead
o
Locality managers
o
Community nurses and other allied health
professionals
o
Community and hospital pharmacy teams
o
Hospital staff with responsibilities for
prescribing and medicines optimisation
