In Prescribing hub
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Scope for development and collaboration
| Qualified as prescriber |
| 2022 |
| Prescribing experience |
| Four years. I was annotated on the Sunday and prescribing by 10am on the Monday |
| Organisations and professional memberships |
Royal College of Pharmacy
National Pharmacy Association |
|
| Do you have an area of special interest? |
On-the-day illness.
| Have you expanded your scope of practice since qualifying? |
I qualified in vaccines and travel as that was an available scope for my IP course. However, my passion was always on-the-day illness. I also prescribe in a private weight management service.
| How did you ensure you were competent? |
I accepted 10-16 GP referrals a day and underwent negotiated clinical supervision for those patients I could not treat myself.
| What prescribing services are you providing? |
Vaccines and travel health, on-the-day illness and weight management.
| What is the balance between private and NHS services? |
I see between four and six private patients a day and provide 10-16 NHS services.
| How much time do you spend doing consultations? |
24 hours a week.
| How do you find the time? |
We have a two or three pharmacist model in the company, which frees up my time. We do not currently use automation or have any accuracy checking technicians.
| What are the risks involved in providing this service? |
There are quite a few risks that we considered in our risk assessment and mitigated against with our GP colleagues and ICB community pharmacy clinical lead.
| Have you done a risk assessment? |
Yes, the NPA now provides a generic risk assessment template to adapt for local use. It also has some excellent SOPs and is my ‘go to’ for resources.
| If you would like to share your experience of being an independent prescriber, email: pm@1530.com |
| What is the patient view on the prescribing service? |
Patients like it a lot. The arbitrary exclusions of PGDs are gone, which is better for everyone.
| Is it professionally rewarding? |
Yes, as it improves access to care, patient satisfaction and multidisciplinary working.
| Do you get feedback about the service from patients or others in primary care? |
Yes – the GPs I work with are my biggest cheer-leaders. We work very closely with them. In fact, I recently co-wrote a CPD module for Pharmacy Magazine about GP/pharmacist collaboration with one of the GPs (see pharmacymagazine.co.uk/cpd-modules).
| Is it financially successful for the pharmacy? |
Oh yes!
I benefit from GP debriefs, support from my IP buddies on my course and the amazing team at Evans.
| What advice would you give someone starting out as a prescriber? |
Choose an area for your scope that you can use in practice. In community pharmacy, vaccines and travel health, or ear, nose and throat infections, are a great place to start. When you’ve qualified, CPPE’s ‘Extending the scope of your prescribing practice’ e-course and workshop programme is a great resource, even if I say so myself as the developer!
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