Journal of Pharmacy Management - Jan 2022

Journal of Pharmacy Management • Volume 38 • Issue 1 • January 2022 mentoring from the consultant pharmacist, enabling improved relationships with the practice as well as integration into team. The literature suggests it can also support GPs in meeting their targets. This can be seen through research conducted by Snowdon D, Hau R, Leggat G et al. (2016) whereby the results of their study determined that having a clinical supervisor “was associated with safer surgery and other invasive procedures for medical practitioners” (Snowdon et al 2016). This reflects in other clinical practices such as conducting medication reviews as the pharmacists have more confidence in their decisions, improving efficiency. This in turn will help alleviate the pressure on the GPs in the practice so that they can carry out other essential tasks with high-risk patients. Laven (2018), demonstrated the positive impact of a pharmacist on medication adherence. This is corroborated through papers published in JAMA which show “a significant improvement in adherence post-hospitalisation for acute coronary syndrome” (Williams 2014). Cost The issue of cost was raised by one participant. This participant suggested that a consultant pharmacist could be more cost effective when working at multiple GPs in a borough, sharing the benefit and cost more widely. Dr Helen Williams stated that by hiring PCN pharmacists it would “reduce their locum costs” (Williams 2014). Moreover Williams, a GP herself, discusses how the cost of employing a PCN pharmacist is between £34k-45k per annumwhich is balanced against the savings delivered as a result of the pharmacists’ skillset. Future work Going forward exploration of the benefit of a Consultant Pharmacist compared to other pharmacist coaches and mentors would be useful, including identifying key success factors for the role (e.g. clinical experience and credibility outside pharmacy). To improve integration of the consultant into the practice, more frequent meetings with the pharmacists and GP would both further joined-up working, improve shared understanding of the role and make apparent the role and benefit of the Consultant Pharmacist, complementary to the GP support provided to the PCN pharmacists. This would contribute to further optimisation of the role of the PCN pharmacist in the GP setting. In a non-pandemic, situation there is likely to be more opportunity for the GP and consultant pharmacist to observe or conduct joint consultations with PCN pharmacists and for these pharmacists to learn fromother clinicians in the practice. As the PCN pharmacist role matures, the Consultant Pharmacist role may develop into supporting PCN pharmacists to reflect on their roles, help them resolve any initial challenges with their practices and their roles. There is potential for contributing to PCN pharmacist development across multiple PCNs, connect pharmacists together in small local networks to develop group support and train group facilitators for normative (everyday good practice), formative (developing practice) and restorative (managing challenging practice) supervision with each other. One of the authors (NB) is aware of restorative supervision networks in place 20