Preparation for General Practice Course for Pharmacists - Health Education England

A number of recent strategic documents and reports have highlighted the desire for an extended role for pharmacists in primary care.

The NHS Five Year Forward View proposed a model of integrated primary care teams, with pharmacists playing a greater role in patient care and especially around being the first port of call for minor ailments.

Point 8 of the NHS England GP 10 point plan (new ways of working) proposed new roles for allied healthcare professionals within GP surgeries, utilising the skill mix to alleviate current pressures.

Although pharmacists have been working in GP surgeries for many years, this has happened in an ad-hoc fashion and their roles have largely consisted of medicines management-type functions.

In order for the ambitious aims of the strategic documents to be realised, a new type of role for pharmacists needed to be created, with recruitment at scale and in a structured manner to ensure long term viability.

This national impetus gave rise to the national Clinical Pharmacist pilot, placing approximately 400 pharmacists in General Practice with a view to these individuals taking over caseloads of patients (particularly those with long-term conditions needing on-going monitoring) from GPs, thereby freeing up GP time for patients with more complex needs.

This patient-facing role in a largely new sector for pharmacists required an underpinning programme of education to ensure that pharmacists had the skills necessary to practice effectively and safely.

This pilot, which is still in its first year, in turn provided the impetus for a proposed wider rollout in the GP Forward View of approximately 1500 more pharmacists to take on these new roles, in effect creating an entirely new and sizeable workforce to work in General Practice.

However, there is at present no educational support to prepare these pharmacists for the new roles.

It is therefore essential that a support programme is made available to provide interested pharmacists with the core skills necessary to not only apply for roles as they become available, but also to demonstrate as early as possible the value of a General Practice pharmacist within a unified primary care team.

As the presence of a patient-facing pharmacist in a surgery setting is unfamiliar to many, the imperative to demonstrate short and long term value cannot be underestimated as pharmacists in a variety of primary care roles have been clearly identified as being key to an integrated workforce.

It is therefore the intention of HEE LaSE to provide underpinning knowledge to pharmacists within the region who may be seeking employment in this sector.