Job responsibilities
To deliver a high quality Medicines Optimisation Service to improve medicines related outcomes for high risk patients and ensure the safe, cost effective and evidence based use of medicines
Conduct clinical medication reviews with patients, within patients homes, clinic, local hub, or practice setting. The role may involve working within care homes.
Undertake Proactive Structured Medication Reviews using a holistic approach to medicines management
To build relationships with key stakeholders delivering neighbourhood health care
Ensure proactive liaison with relevant healthcare professionals regarding changes to medication regimes. e.g. regular GP, nursing/ care home, community pharmacist ensuring they have the information they need and that follow-up appointment are clear where necessary
Make prescribing recommendations as per local and national guidance.
Prescribe within competence for patients to improve patient care
Case manage patients who are frequently admitted to acute trusts as a result of medicines related problems
To provide professional support and compose patient-agreed medication care plans and communicate these with other health and social care professionals e.g. Community Pharmacists, hospital teams, carers etc.
Work with Neighbourhood health MDT to ensure patients are supported to get the best out of their medicines. Ensure liaison with the regular GP, hospital clinicians, community nurses, carers, family, community pharmacists and care coordinators to ensure an integrated approach to medicines management, with a view to ensuring continuity of pharmaceutical care for patients in different healthcare settings.
Develop a range of practical solutions to enable patients to maintain their independence to selfadminister their medication where possible and improve adherence and concordance
To liaise with the ICB Medicines Management Teams to ensure consistency across local prescribing strategies and support cost-effective prescribing
Work collaboratively with system partners to improve medicine pathways
Ensure that developments are linked in with organisational priorities and Local Delivery Plans including cost-effective prescribing
Contribute to agreed meetings within and outside the organisation and represent pharmacy as appropriate
Respond to unpredictable work patterns and urgent requests for help by phone or email within a reasonable time frame
To deliver training sessions to relevant staff groups and/or patients
Coordinate and participate in antibiotic stewardship
Respond to medicines information queries from the greater Community Adult Health Service team, including therapists, community nurses, healthcare assistants, social workers etc.
Key Responsibilities at Healthcare Central London:
The post-holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in primary care 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, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities.
Responsibilities will include (but will not be limited to):
To deliver pharmacy related aspects of the Network Direct Enhanced Service such as conducting structured medication reviews (SMRs)
To review patients in multimorbidity clinics and in partnership with primary care colleagues in order to implement improvements to patients medicines, including de- prescribing
To manage own case load and run long-term condition clinics - where responsible for prescribing as an independent prescriber
To routinely review the on-going need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients to get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation)
To support the medicines optimisation of designated care home residents/ vulnerable housebound patients as needed and within own scope of competence/practice to reduce risk of hospital admission and/or harm from poor use of medicines
To attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case meetings. Identifying key areas of need for vulnerable patients and contribute to the formulation of care plans.
To signpost to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate
To respond to medicinerelated enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients
To provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes to therapy to optimise effectiveness and safety of medicines
To devise and implement practice searches to identify cohorts of patients most likely to be at risk of an unplanned admission and readmissions from medicines and take appropriate action on results
To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes, following outpatient clinics etc. - including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes. To manage these changes as may be appropriate
To perform a clinical medication review, produce a post discharge medicines care plan including dose titration and booking of follow up tests and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge
To set up and manage systems to ensure continuity of medicines supply to high-risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes)
To manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates; make necessary changes as an independent prescriber, and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.
To identify and provide leadership on areas of prescribing and medicines optimization within the practice
To conduct clinical audits and improvement projects or work with colleagues such as GP registrars, practice managers etc. to promote patient safety as relates to medicines
To present results and provide leadership on suggested improvements to colleague pharmacists, GP practices and other healthcare partners. To contribute to national and local research initiatives.
To identify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use of medicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence form national guidance e.g. NICE
To provide leadership to the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved
To undertake risk assessment and management and ensure compliance with medicines legislation
Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations
To monitor practice prescribing against the local health economys RAG list for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).
To liaise directly with hospital colleagues where prescribing needs to be returned to specialists. Assist practices in setting and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system.
To audit the practices compliance against NICE guidance. Share and discuss newsletters, alerts and changing guidance with other clinicians relating to important prescribing developments or changes
To provide education and training to the primary healthcare team on therapeutics, medicines optimization and common chronic disease management as relates to medicines as appropriate
To support public health campaigns. To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to general public.
To demonstrate self-development through continuous professional development activity
To support and engage with the HCL clinical supervision and training in place for all pharmacists
To demonstrate the ability to critically evaluate and review literature, identify gaps in evidenced based practice and support the implementation/promotion of evidenced based care at practice level
To adopt a whole system approach to medicines management
