Job responsibilities
Patient facing role undertaking face to face medications
reviews for:
patients on complex polypharmacy with long term
conditions
housebound patients
specific disease areas identified as a priority area
within the PCN
Review patients with single or multiple medical
problems where medicine optimisation is required.
Review on-going need for each medicine, assess monitoring
requirements and support patients to ensure treatment is safe, appropriate
and optimised for maximum clinical benefit.
Discuss recommendations and outcomes with relevant
members of the PCN team and provide appropriate and timely follow up.
Support patients to optimise medicines by providing additional
written patient information leaflets, and liaise with community pharmacists
about the need for special requirements to aid adherence.
Management of Common/Minor/Self-Limiting Ailments
Support practices in improving patient access for minor
ailments and acute presentations.
Promote the importance of self-care and signpost patients
to community pharmacies in line with national guidance on over the counter
medicines.
Medicines Information to Practice Staff and Patients
Support relevant medicine-related enquiries from the
practice team, PCN team, community pharmacists and patients.
Update practice teams at weekly meetings on current
medicines related information and issues with a view to educating and
improving prescribing within the practice.
Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to practice
staff regularly to highlight prescribing issues.
Communicate
recommended actions relating to medication and medical device safety alerts.
Medicines Reconciliation
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.
Commissioned improvements for QIPP and medicines
optimisation
Support
the practice and the PCN in delivering the outcomes as required in the medicines section of the Clinical
Commissioning Contract
Signposting
Ensure that patients are
referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for specialist referral,
monitoring and/or referred to the social prescriber for further support
services where required.
Repeat Prescribing
Review, implement and support adherence to the
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 patients needing a
review.
Ensure patients on repeat prescriptions have the
required monitoring and assessments undertaken as appropriate to their
condition(s) and medicines prescribed.
Clinical Governance
Communicate, action and support implementation of
MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and other local and national guidelines and
formulary recommendations.
Undertake clinical audits in priority areas
identified by the CCG medicines management team or within the PCN and
feedback results to practices and the PCN and support them in implementing
recommendations.
Support practices and PCNs in identifying and
reporting onto NRLS any incidents relating to medicines. Be involved in
investigating medicines incidents and identifying and implementing any
required system improvements.
Support implementation of shared care protocols in
practice, including processes to improve monitoring of high- risk drugs.
Review the use of medicines most commonly associated
with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and
individual patient reviews.
Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm
from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches e.g. using
PINCER and other tools.
Work with the general practice team to ensure the
practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
Education and Training
Contribute to the provision
of education and training on medicines optimisation and specific therapeutic
areas to healthcare professionals within the PCN and to the wider CCG/ICB
geography.
Public Health
To support public health campaigns.
To provide specialist advice on all public health
programmes available to the general public.
General
Undertake any other work supporting medicines
optimisation in GP practices and the PCN commensurate with the banding of the
post and which is agreed between the postholder and the manager
Key Collaborative
Working Relationships
The post-holder will be required to work with a wide range
of stakeholders. It is important that the post holder recognises the roles of
other colleagues to person-centred care, and liaises with other stakeholders as
needed for the collective benefit of patients including:
Patients and Patient Participation Groups (PPGs)
GPs, nurses and other practice staff
Other healthcare professionals including CCG
pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social
care teams, dieticians etc.
Locality / GP prescribing lead and Locality managers
Community nurses and other allied health
professionals
Integration between general practice community
and hospital pharmacy teams
Ability to work as a member of a team within the
PCN
Collaboration
with network resources to support care management plans and social prescribing
Knowledge, Skills and
Experience Required (please see Person Specification)
Has experience/awareness
of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be
seen in a general medical practice.
Minimum of 2 years post
graduate experience in pharmacy, as demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
Holds an independent
prescribing qualification, is working towards a qualification or has the
intention to complete this in the future.
Demonstrates an understanding of the role of a
clinical pharmacist within primary care and where it fits into and how it
complements the practice team and the wider PCN team.
Accountable for
delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.
Able to follow legal,
ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of
conduct.
Health and
Safety/Risk Management
An expectation is for all staff to have a commitment to
promoting and maintaining a safe and healthy environment and be responsible for
their own and others welfare. In
addition, staff will be expected to undertake the statutory mandatory health
and safety training and other training relevant to their specialist area of
work.
Equality and
Diversity
The post-holder must co-operate with all policies and
procedures designed to ensure equality of employment and complete the required
statutory mandatory training.
Patient
Confidentiality
The post-holder should respect patient confidentiality at
all times and not divulge patient information unless sanctioned by the
requirements of the role.
In view of the
dynamic nature of the role, this job description is intended to provide an
outline of the duties and responsibilities; it will be subject to review and
amendment as necessary in consultation with the post holder.
