Job 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 for medicine improvement.
Patient Facing Clinical
Medication Review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce
recommendations for prescribing and monitoring.
Patient Facing Domiciliary
Clinical Medication Review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce
recommendations for 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 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 re-admissions 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.
Education and Training
Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on
therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
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 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.
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.
Research and Evaluation
Demonstrates ability to critically evaluate and review literature
Demonstrates ability to identify where there is a gap in the
evidence base to support practice
Demonstrates ability to generate evidence suitable for
presentations at practice and local level
Demonstrates ability to apply research evidence base into working
place
Demonstrates understanding of principles of research governance.
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
Liaise 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
Management
Demonstrate understanding of the implications of national
priorities for the team and/or service
Demonstrate understanding of the process for effective resource
utilisation
Demonstrate understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards
of practice
Demonstrates ability to identify and resolve risk management
issues according to policy/protocol
Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures
relating to performance management
Demonstrate ability to extend boundaries of service delivery
within the team
Health and Safety/Risk
Management
The post-holder must comply at all times with the Practices
Health and Safety policies, in particular by following agreed safe working
procedures and reporting incidents using the organisations Incident Reporting
System.
The post-holder will comply with the Data Protection Act (1984)
and the Access to Health Records Act (1990).
