Option 3 - INR service via Community Pharmacy: IMPACTAgewell® Social Prescribing Project

The fifth theme asks What is patient or person centred care?

Rachel Davies describes an INR service delivered via community pharmacy before Jonathon Lloyd speaks on A population approach for Community Pharmacy working within the IMPACTAgewell® Social Prescribing Project.

Rachel Davies is the owner and superintendent of Burry Port Pharmacy in Carmarthenshire, Wales. Having studied at Portsmouth University, she began her career in community pharmacy working firstly with an independent and later with a large multiple company. In 2006, Rachel joined primary care as a prescribing advisor for Cotswold and Vale Primary Care Trust (PCT) where she gained her Independent Prescribing qualification. Born in Carmarthen and brought up in Burry Port, Rachel returned to the area to enjoy the sea air and the outdoor lifestyle where she worked as a pharmaceutical care home advisor for a local Health Board. She has an MSc in Public Health and uses her independent prescribing qualification to manage INR monitoring clinics from the community pharmacy. Rachel says that being a pharmacist in Wales is rewarding. She is allowed the opportunity to flourish – enabling her to change the perceptions of pharmacy and develop new services and better care for patients.

‘INR service via Community Pharmacy’

This will outline the establishment of a warfarin clinic, which utilises Independent Prescriber status to routinely ensure that patients’ anticoagulant therapy is managed close to home. Testing can be done via a finger prick test and the result is immediately available. This service has made a dramatic difference to patients in terms of their care and travel time, and ensures that they have continuity of care from their already trusted community pharmacist.

Jonathan Lloyd qualified as a pharmacist in 1996 and has been practicing in community pharmacy since that time. Jonathan has been the owner and superintendent pharmacist of Carrickfergus Chemists since 1999. He is a Past President of the Ulster Chemists Association and currently still serves on the executive committee. Jonathan has held the position of Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) Pharmacist Clinical Lead for East Antrim since 2014. ICPs are collaborative networks of care providers, bringing together doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, hospital specialists, other healthcare professionals and the voluntary and community sectors, as well as service users and carers, to design and coordinate local health and social care services. Jonathan is a Director in PACT (Primary Care and Community Together), which is a social enterprise linking community pharmacy and the C&V (community and voluntary) sector. 

A population approach for Community Pharmacy working within the IMPACTAgewell® Social Prescribing Project

The IMPACTAgewell^© project commenced in April 2017 thanks to funding support from the Dunhill Medical Trust. The Vision of the project is to improve the quality of life for older people, now and in the future, by providing them with person-centred services that put their wellbeing and social needs on a par with their medical needs. With the support of an IMPACTAgewell Project Officer, local GPs, Community Pharmacists (via PACT) and Health Trust staff, we will support older people and empower them to manage their long term health conditions and also access the wealth of community/voluntary activities in the area. PACT has developed a new ‘model of care’ for the community pharmacy network that includes a PACT pharmacist to represent all the community pharmacies working within the project and the locality. This is a new concept of community pharmacies working together to provide a ‘population model of care’.