Job responsibilities
Patient facing Long-term condition - where
appropriate patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine
optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma). Review the ongoing 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.
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.
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 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 - 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-pared 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 economies 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.
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 public.
