Job responsibilities
Patient facing Long-‐term condition ClinicsSee (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma, hypertension, diabetes).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 Structured Medication Review
Undertake structured medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Patient facing care home Structured Medication Reviews
Undertake structured 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 Structured Medication Review
Undertake structured 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 practices.
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
Produce and implement 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 GPs/PCN, 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
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