Job responsibilities
Job 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 will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical prescriber.
Please view the job description document for the full description.
Patient facing longterm 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.
Primary Duties and Areas of
Responsibility
Patient facing
Clinical Medication Review
Undertake clinical medication reviews
with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist,
nurses and/or GPs 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.
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 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 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 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) and ensuring that the appropriate monitoring is
taking place.
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:
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
Job Description Agreement
This
job description is intended to provide an outline of the key tasks and responsibilities
only. There may be other duties required of the post-holder commensurate with
the position. This description will be open to regular review and may be
amended to take into account development within the Practice. All members of
staff should be prepared to take on additional duties or relinquish existing
duties in order to maintain the efficient running of the Practice.
