This new project has evolved from earlier projects undertaken within Health Education England (West Midlands) to look at the potential impact of pharmacists working in Emergency Departments. It will evaluate pharmacist capability in an urgent care centre setting; the aim being to demonstrate the ability of advanced practice pharmacists with a prescribing qualification to practise competently and confidently as part of a multi-professional Urgent and Acute clinical workforce.
The project will aim to:
Determine whether, following a structured pathway of clinical skills and diagnostic training the pharmacist practitioner has gained sufficient skills to practice (confidently and competently) at an enhanced clinical level in an Urgent Care Centre setting; managing patients within defined clinical groupings. Continue to develop an evidence base for proposing the training and development of advanced clinical pharmacists in Urgent and Acute care; practising as part of a multi-skilled, multi-disciplinary workforce, within a defined range of clinical groupings. Evidence the suitability of the advanced practice pathway as a training model for future development of clinical pharmacists. Evidence through direct patient contact, whether clinically trained pharmacists can have a positive impact on patient flow in an Urgent Care Centre setting, as an integrated workforce model. Evidence the sustainability of clinically enhanced pharmacists in future workforce planning and justify implementation of new roles into core business.
Evidence the sustainability of clinically enhanced pharmacists in future workforce planning and justify implementation of new roles into core business.
The project currently aims to evaluate the experience of having pharmacists as part of the multi-professional team in three different sites. The sites were selected based upon their perceived readiness to adapt this model and support for an integrated approach to health care across settings.
Site 1: Three pharmacists have been employed to work within the urgent care team in Queen’s Hospital Romford (Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust). All three pharmacists are now in post and have commenced their training programme.
Site 2: An outline proposal has been agreed and recruitment will commence shortly for 3 pharmacists to be based in the Urgent Care Centre, Whittington Health, London.
Site 3: Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, Kent has been identified as a third site. The Urgent Care Centre is run by Medway On Call Care (MedOCC) and 3 pharmacists will form part of the multi-professional team there.
Promoting close working relationships with primary care is a key element of this project and all of these 3 sites are also locations for the NHS England pilot of pharmacists in general practice. Linked to this, there are plans for shared learning and collaborative working on between the Urgent Care and GP pharmacists on all pilot sites.
The pharmacists, whilst working in the departments as Urgent Care Pharmacists (UCP), will also undertake training consisting of 12 months of the three year Advanced Clinical Practice programme Level 7 (MSc Advanced Clinical Practice). The baseline for study content and course cost will be the Warwick University Medical School MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice, aligned to the West Midlands and national Advanced Practice programmes. In addition clinical supervision will be provided by allocated medical practitioners in the A&E department or Urgent Care Centre. Pharmacists recruited into the project should already hold prescribing qualifications.
The project is being independently evaluated by the University of East Anglia with researcher support from Medway School of Pharmacy.