Job responsibilities
The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts
within their professional boundaries, working 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 clinical
leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some
aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services, in
partnership with the management team.
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.
Primary Duties and Areas of
Responsibility
Patient facing long term conditions- See (where
appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine
optimisation is required.
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.
Patient facing clinical medication review-Undertake
clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for
nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Patient facing care home medication reviews-
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations
for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring
Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines
ordering and administration.
Patient facingdomiciliary clinical medication
review- Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and
produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and
monitoring.
Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case
conferences.
Medicine information to practice staff and patients -Answer
medicinerelated 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 test results, common/minor
ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc. Where appropriate, support the clinical and
admin teams with:
1.
Repeat prescribing policy and process:
Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient
requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates
and flagging those needing a review.
Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when
required.
2.
Risk stratification: Identification of
cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared
practice computer searches.
3.
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).
4.
Information management: Analyse,
interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support
decision making.
5.
Medicines quality improvement:
Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback
results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.
6.
Medicines safety: Implement changes to
medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and
national guidance.
7.
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
practice in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the
practice computer system. Auditing
practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Provide newsletters or bulletins on important
prescribing messages.
8.
Education and training: Provide
education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines
optimisation.
9.
Care Quality Commission: Work with the
general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards
where medicines are involved.
10. 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. PCN)
Demonstrates ability to lead 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 ICB colleagues including
ICB Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient
care and benefit
Liaises with ICB 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
Patients GP, nurses and other practice staff, other healthcare professionals
including ICB and other PCN pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists,
dentists, health and social care teams and dieticians, 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.