Clinical Pharmacist - Independent Prescriber (IP)

Clinical Pharmacist - Independent Prescriber (IP) The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regard to prescription and medicines management at different sites. They will help support the repeat prescription system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicines reconciliation on the transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, providing expertise in clinical medicines advice while addressing both public and social care needs of patients in the GP practice (s). They will deliver an efficient, cost-effective, and high-quality clinical service by providing clinical and professional development to the clinical workforce within K&W Healthcare & member practices.

The role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies so require motivation and passion to deliver excellent service within general practice.

Main duties of the job

• Demonstrate a significant reduction in the amount of GP time spent (especially locum GP time) by seeing patients in appointment slots for clinical medication reviews, and responding to urgent medication requests and queries. Complex patients or those with additional needs may require longer appointment slots.
• Review the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs, and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines.
• Managing minor ailments triage
• Contribute to multidisciplinary reviews about medication-related issues
• Reconcile medicinesfollowing hospital discharge
• Targeted medication reviews particularly in high-risk patients
• Medication reviews
• Signpost patients to other services or sources of information in addition to medication information when necessary in order to improve the general health and well-being of patients.
• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audits and individual patient reviews.
• 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 medicine supply to high-risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).

About us K&W Healthcares primary objective is to support GP Practices and services across the Brent localities of Kingsbury, Willesden and Wembley.Ouraim isto develop quality primary care for patients within Brent and strive for continuous improvement in the delivery of primary healthcare services across our GP practices.

K&W Healthcare is a GP-led organisation made up of 27 GP practices serving a registered population of over 220,000 patients. We are committed to improving the care provided to patients, reducing health inequalities and raising the quality and standards of GP practices.

You can find out more about our governing body, member practices and how we work with Brent Integrated Care Partnership to provide better outcomes for our patients by clicking the button below.

Job responsibilities Clinical reviews/input

• Demonstrate a significant reduction in the amount of GP time spent (especially locum GP time) by seeing patients in appointment slots for clinical medication reviews, and responding to urgent medication requests and queries. Complex patients or those with additional needs may require longer appointment slots.
• Review the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs, and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines. Ensuring they get the best use of their medicines
• Minor ailments triage: Managing caseload of patients with common /minor/self-limiting ailments requesting GP appointments and triaging patients appropriately.
• Provide patient-facing clinics for those patients with questions, queries, and concerns about their medication in order to improve medication adherence.
• Minor ailments appointment slots as appropriate
• Contribute to multidisciplinary reviews about medication-related issues
• Reconcile medicinesfollowing hospital discharge
• Review daily pathology results for selected patients on known medicines
• Targeted medication reviews particularly in high-risk patients (frail elderly, poly-pharmacy, renaland hepatic impairment, high-risk medicines, etc.)
• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the nurses and GPs on prescribing.
• Support practices with the management of patients with drug dependence and alcohol-related disorders.
• Signpost patients to other services or sources of information in addition to medication information when necessary in order to improve the general health and well-being of patients.
• Make appropriate recommendations to the senior clinical pharmacist or GPs for medical improvement.
• Unplanned Admissions andDischarge
• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audits and individual patient reviews.
• Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patient groups.
• 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 medicine supply to high-risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).
• Assist with QOF targets, especially with the management of long-term conditions: Asthma, COPD, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure- seeing these patients where their long-term condition needs to be reviewed or where dose optimizations and monitoring are required as per guidelines.
• Undertake training/certification in health assessments, history taking, and physical examination. Commit to starting an independent prescribing course within 6 months of the probationary period ending
• Reduce inappropriate poly-pharmacy.
• Address medicines adherence with patients and provide follow-up phone calls to check progress.

Audits and Risk Stratification

• Increase quality and safety of prescribing through regular K&W audits and practice-specific audits
• Implement drug withdrawals and alerts e.g. MHRA aimed at improving medicines safety
• Implementing medication-related NICE guidelines
• Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through practice computer searches.
• Repeat prescribing process
• Link with the community and hospital pharmacies about discharges and repeat prescribing queries.
• Improve the repeat prescribing process within K&W practices by working extensively with dispensing community pharmacies. Communicating with them more effectively about medication queries
• Implement and manage the repeat dispensing process.
• Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorization process by reviewing requests for repeat prescriptions and medicines reaching review dates
• Syncing patient's medication to reduce wastage, DMD corrections to facilitate EPS
• Help improve the processes for monitoring and prescribing high-risk drugs (especially warfarin and methotrexate)
• Ensure all practices have a repeat prescribing policy and all staff are aware and are adhering to it.
• Improve the quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness of prescribing by liaising with GPs and/or other non-medical prescribers to action MM recommendation
• Be a source of medicines information for all of the K&W practice teams and patients (e.g. around doses, side effects, adverse events, possible alternatives e.g. around stocks)
• Working with GPs to ensure medicines management audits, prescribing recommendations and targets are up-to-date.
• Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages
• Liaising with other pharmacy teams including the CCG medicines management team to obtain practice-specific prescribing data and information on other local prescribing initiatives guidance.
• Encourage practices to work in line with the NWL integrated formulary.
• Encourage regular locums to work in line with locally agreed guidance.
• Empower other K & W Healthcare staff to contribute to good quality medicines management for member practices and care homes.
• Work with the general practice team to ensure that the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
• 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.

Public Health

• To support public health campaigns
• To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programs available to general practice
• Maintaining an open door policy throughout the day unless consulting with a patient. K&W & practice personnel can contact the clinical pharmacist for any medication advice and urgent issues that they feel are appropriate.
• Practice sessions will be set up on an agreed day(s) of the week. Admin and GPs can directly book in patients and telephone consults. GPs can also directly book patients requiring pharmacist interventions into sessions.
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