Lecture 13: The Pharmacy Workforce | Community Pharmacy

Pharmacist in Community Pharmacy

• Dealing with OTC queries

• Recognising signs and symptoms

• Referring patients to other HCPs

• Clinical interventions

• Final decision maker

Clinical checing

Check precriptions to see if they’re:

• Legal

• Safe

• Effective

• Rational and evidence-based

• Practical

The 5 rights

1. The right drug

2. At the right dose

3. At the right time

4. By the right route

5. To the patient

The right to refuse

Examples of clinical pharmacy interventions

• Dosage or medicine query with the precriber

• Clinically significant interactions

• Use of medicines outside of their license

• Excessive precribing

Making an intervention

Identify an error → contact the precriber → higlight error → make recommendations → document intervention in the medical notes

Pharmacy Contractual Framework 

3 tiers of service:

1. Essential services - compulsory and the minimum required of a contractor as part of the pharmacy contract 

2. Advanced services 

3. Enhanced services

• Allow the skills and knowledge of the pharmacist to be used to their full potential for maximum benefit and convenience for patients

Essential Services

Advanced services

Enhanced services

• May be national or local to a particular area dependent on the area’s needs

• Locally commissioned by NHSE local teams, CCGs, and Local Authorities

Daily duties: supplying presciption medicines

• Keeping a register of controlled drugs for legal and stock control purposes

• Liasing with doctors about precriptions

• Advicing patients of any adverse side-effects of medicines or potential interacinteractions with other medicines/treatments

Daily duties: treatment of minor ailments

• Selling OTC medicines

• Counselling and advising the public on the treament of minor ailments

• Signposting people to to other members of the healthcare team

Daily duties: clinical roles

• Roles traditionally undertaken by doctors include management of asthma and diabetes

• Help giving up smoking

• Alter their diets to make them healthier

• Advise on sexual health matters

Daily duties: others

• Managing, supervising and training pharmacy support staff

• Budgeting and financial management

• Keeping up-to-date with current pharmacy practice, new drugs and their uses

Standard operating procedurs - SOPs

A written instruction describing how a routing task is to be carried out; when, where and by whom

• Include all the written protocols in place withina pharmacy

• States the way a pharmacy expects tasks to be carried out to enusre provision of a quality service

Advantages of SOPs

• Can assist with the qaulity assurance, ensuring that patients receive a service that meets certain predefined standards

• They ensure consistency, which helps to maintain the level of service offered and therefore maintain good pharmaceutical pratice at all times

• Help free time for pharmacists by enabling the delegation of certain tasks

• Useful templates in the training of new satff

• They provide addtional information for the audit process

• Reviewed regularly to ensure they are up to date

Pharmacy support staff

• Pharmacy technician

• Accredited Checking Technician

• Dispenser/dispensing assistant

• Medicines Counter Assistant

Support staff - range of duties

• Taking in and handing out precriptions

• Dispensing prescriptions

• Using dispensary and stores computer systems to generate stock lists and labels

• Helping to maintain reasonable dispensary stock levels

• Selling OTC medicines

• Ensuring that health and safety requirements are met

• Assisting with the manufacture of medicines

Medicines Counter Assistant

• Involved in the sale of OTC medicine and works under the supervision of a pharmacist

• Trained to offer advice on common ailments and must know when to refer a customer to a pharmacist

Dispensing Assistant

• Sale of OTC medicines and the provision of information to customers on symptoms and products

• Prescription receipt and collection

• Assembly of precsribed items 

• Supply of pharmaceutical stock

Pharmacy technician

• Label and dispense prescribed medicines and provide information and advice to patients about how to use their medicines

• Working under the guidance of the pharmacist, they are also trained to advise members of the public about OTC medicines, the management of minor ailments and healthy lifestyles

Skills required to be a community pharmacist