Overview
The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice. 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. 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.
Primary duties and areas of responsibility
* Management of medicines at discharge from hospital: 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).
* Repeat prescribing: follow/maintain 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 needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.
* Medicine information: provide information to practice staff and patients; answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.
* Clinical decision support: suggesting and recommending solutions; providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
* Telephone medicines support: provide telephone consultations for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
* Patient-facing medicines support: provide patient-facing clinics for those patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice.
* Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments: manage 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 Clinical Medication Review: undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
* Unplanned hospital admissions: review the use of medicines most 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.
* Risk stratification: identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches (patient-related and/or medicine-related risks).
* Information management: work in collaboration with the CCG Pharmacist to 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: collaborate with the CCG Pharmacist to 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.
* Collaborative working relationships: recognize the roles of other colleagues within the organisation and their role to patient care; demonstrate appropriate communication to gain cooperation of stakeholders (including patients, colleagues, other NHS/private organisations such as PCNs); work as a member of a team; refer to more appropriate colleagues when necessary; develop and maintain effective working relationships within and outside the practice and locality; foster links with services across locality; explore potential for collaborative working; integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams; liaise with PCN colleagues and Heads of Medicines Management/Optimisation to benefit from peer support; liaise with other stakeholders for the collective benefit of patients including GPs, nurses and other staff, and other professionals such as PCN pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, dieticians and social care teams.
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. This job description is intended as a basic guide to the scope and responsibilities of the post and is not exhaustive. It will be subject to regular review and amendment as necessary in consultation with the post holder.
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