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
prescriptions 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 will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical
prescriber.
KEY
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
review
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.
Patient
facing domiciliary clinical medication review
Undertake
clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the
Senior Clinical Pharmacists, Nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring.
Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.
Management of common/minor/self-limiting
aliments
Managing
caseload for 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 all
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 high-risk 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 high-‐risk 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
simple 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 economy’s 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 practice’s
computer system. Auditing practice’s 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
The post
holder will:
- Recognise
the roles of other colleagues within the organisation and their role to patient care
- Demonstrate
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)
- Demonstrate
ability to work as a member of a team
- 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
- Explore
the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and
sustain such relationships
- Demonstrate
ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy
teams
- Liaise
with CCG colleagues including CCG Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit
- Liaise
with CCG pharmacists and Heads of Medicines Management/ Optimisation to benefit from peer support
- Liaise
with other GP Practices and staff as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to:
- Patients
- GP, Nurses, and other practice staff
- Other healthcare professionals including CCG pharmacists, pharmacy
technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social care teams and
dieticians etc
- Locality / GP prescribing lead
- Locality managers
- Community nurses and other allied health professionals
- Community and hospital pharmacy teams
- Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines
optimisation
Please download the supporting documentation
for full role details and to assist with your application.