Job responsibilities
Job Purpose:
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 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 an excellent service within general practice.
Key duties and 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 Senior Pharmacists or GPs for
medicine improvement.
Patient facing Clinical Medication Review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce
recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing
and monitoring.
Patient facing care home medication reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce
recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacist, nurses or GPs on
prescribing and monitoring. Work with care home staff to improve safety of
medicines ordering and administration.
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
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.
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. 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.
