Pharmacists on the Front Line
Since the 2015 pilot launch of the NHS England Clinical Pharmacists in General Practice Programme, there are now over 1000 full-time equivalent Clinical Pharmacists working across England. We spoke to Davina Gadhia, a Senior Clinical Pharmacist at a GP practice in Leicestershire, who gave us an insight into this important and developing pharmacy role.
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s a senior clinical pharmacist working in general practice, I am passionate about pharmacists utilising their skills and expertise to help improve patient care. Modern pharmacy has progressed significantly, moving away from traditional dispensing roles known by the public to more clinical roles. Although, community and hospital pharmacists will still be required for essential medication advice and ensuring safe provision of medicines. The Role in Action Pharmacists already have clinical knowledge of medications and therefore access to GP records, including blood tests and hospital letters, as well as a patient’s medical history. Thus, allowing pharmacists to do level 3 clinical medication reviews. In my practice, I am able to work in a multidisciplinary team to refer on patients who I feel are outside my competency. I work in a supportive practice alongside approachable GPs, allowing me to refer the patients with more complex conditions, and work with confidence knowing that I am within my competency.
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We are all working in collaboration, bringing different skills and expertise to the table to help improve and deliver a high quality of care. Davina Gadhia
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Multidisciplinary working and shared decision-making helps improve patient care, as well as easing clinicians’ workloads, freeing up the number of appointments available for patients. In terms of lifting the workload from GPs, Clinical Pharmacists allow GPs to focus on more complex conditions. Pharmacists are taking on more responsibility and utilising their skills and expertise to help with patient care, working in a forwardthinking practice to use the correct professionals to give patients a more holistic model of care.
How Patients Are Supported Patients are open to seeing a pharmacist in general practice and I have had many positive experiences with them. Patients are supported with information on their medications, giving them the opportunity to utilise the pharmacists’ knowledge on medication and ask questions. For example, a patient may be on multiple medications and the pharmacist is able to contribute to the best effective use of them, therefore a pharmacist appointment would be offered instead of a GP. The pharmacist would go through appropriate use of the medication and any side-effects (if experienced), the pharmacist has the knowledge required to offer alternatives. The pharmacist is also able to identify drug interactions and also look at reasons for poor concordance. Deprescribing is also considered during the consultation where appropriate. Pharmacists not only see patients for medication reviews, but also for the monitoring of patients’ long-term conditions such as asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Combined, this creates a significant amount of appointment time that we are freeing up from GPs, allowing more quality time for patients face-to-face. In my opinion, every GP practice should be looking at having pharmacists in general practice. I feel that I am a valued member of my team and my practice is looking at recruiting more pharmacists as it has been positively welcomed. Working in general practice is a fantastic incentive and I feel privileged to be able to utilise my skills in this role.
