Practice Nurse

About Balham Park Surgery

At Balham Park Surgery, we are a large General Practice based in London, serving a patient list of 21,000. Our highly skilled and experienced multidisciplinary team comprises of 5 GP Partners, Management team, Salaried GPs, GP registrars, Pharmacists, Physiotherapists, Social Prescriber, Nurses, HCA, Phlebotomists, Care Navigators and Care Coordinators.

We prioritize the wellbeing of our staff, providing access to an employee assistance service for mental health concerns, stress and anxiety, and fresh fruit for all staff.

Job Responsibilities

• Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas.
• Be a prescriber, or complete training to become a prescriber, and work with and alongside the general practice team.
• Be responsible for the care management of patients with chronic diseases and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy, especially the elderly, people in care homes, those with multiple co-morbidities (in particular frailty, COPD and asthma) and people with learning disabilities or autism (through STOMP Stop Over Medication Programme).
• Provide specialist expertise in the use of medicines while helping to address both the public health and social care needs of patients at the organisation and to help in tackling inequalities.
• Provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation (including ensuring prescribers in the practice conserve antibiotics in line with local antimicrobial stewardship guidance) and quality improvement, while contributing to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and enhanced services.
• Through structured medication reviews, support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste and promote self-care.
• Have a leadership role in supporting further integration of general practice with the wider healthcare teams (including community and hospital pharmacy) to help improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage general practice workload.
• Develop relationships and work closely with other pharmacy professionals across the wider health and social care system.
• Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols, clinical research with medicines, liaison with specialist pharmacists (including mental health and reduction of inappropriate antipsychotic use in people with learning difficulties), liaison with community pharmacists, and anticoagulation.
• Be part of a professional clinical network and have access to appropriate clinical supervision.
• Act as the point of contact for all medicine-related matters, establishing positive working relationships.
• Consult patients within defined levels of competence and independently prescribe acute and repeat medication.
• Receive referrals and directed patients from triage services and other clinicians.
• Receive and resolve medicines queries from patients and other staff.
• Provide medication review services for patients in the practice and during domiciliary visits to the local nursing home.
• Manage a caseload of complex patients.
• Manage a therapeutic drug monitoring system and the recall of patients taking high-risk drugs, anticoagulants, anticonvulsants, and DMARDs, etc.
• Deliver long-term condition clinics and home visits, particularly for patients with complicated medication regimes, and prescribe accordingly.
• Provide pharmaceutical consultations to patients with long-term conditions as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team.
• Review medications for newly registered patients.
• Improve patient and carer understanding of confidence in and compliance with their medication.
• Maintain accurate clinical records in conjunction with extant legislation.
• Encourage cost-effective prescribing throughout the organisation.
• Implement and embed a robust repeat prescribing system.
• Provide advice and answer medication-related queries from patients and staff.
• Organise and oversee the organisation's medicines optimisation systems, including the repeat prescribing and medication review systems.
• Improve the quality and effectiveness of prescribing through clinical audit and education, to improve performance against NICE standards and clinical and prescribing guidance.
• Develop yourself and the role through participation in clinical supervision, training, and service redesign activities.
• Ensure appropriate supervision of safe storage, rotation, and disposal of vaccines and drugs. To apply infection-control measures within the practice according to local and national guidelines.
• Provide subject matter expertise on medication monitoring, implementing and embedding a system.
• Support clinicians with the management of patients suffering from drug and alcohol dependencies.
• Actively signpost patients to the correct healthcare professional.
• Manage a caseload of complex patients and potential care institutions and to provide advice for the GP management of more complex patients or areas such as addictive behaviours, severe mental illness, or end-of-life care.
• Review the latest guidance, ensuring the organisation conforms to NICE, CQC, etc.
• Provide targeted support and proactive reviews for vulnerable, complex patients and those at risk of admission and re-admission to secondary care.
• Handle prescription queries and requests directly.
• Provide proactive leadership on medicines and prescribing systems to the organisation, patients, and their carers.
• Support in the delivery of enhanced services and other service requirements on behalf of the organisation.
• Participate in the management of patient complaints when requested to do so, and participate in the identification of any necessary learning brought about through clinical incidents and near-miss events.
• Undertake all mandatory training and induction programmes.
• Contribute to and embrace the spectrum of clinical governance.
• Attend a formal appraisal with your manager at least every 12 months. Once a performance/training objective has been set, progress will be reviewed on a regular basis so that new objectives can be agreed.
• Contribute to public health campaigns (COVID-19 or flu clinics) through advice or direct care.
• Maintain a clean, tidy, effective working area at all times.

Additional Responsibilities

• Support the delivery of QOF, incentive schemes, QIPP, and other quality or cost-effectiveness initiatives.
• Agree and review prescribing formularies and protocols, and monitor compliance levels.
• Improve the data quality of medicines records and linking to conditions.
• Deliver training, mentoring, and guidance to other clinicians and staff on medicine issues.
• Work in partnership with pharmacists and clinicians in linked hospital(s), improve the safety and quality of prescribing after discharge from hospital admissions and attendance.
• Provide leadership and support to prescription administrative/dispensary staff.
• Produce pharmacy/prescribing newsletters or bulletins on a quarterly basis.
• Develop a specialist area of interest.
• Work with community pharmacists, hospital pharmacists, and other stakeholders in the medicines supply chain to improve patient experience and manage incidents.
• Support virtual and remote models of consultation and support, including e-consultations, remote medication review, and telehealth and telemedicine.
• Undertake any tasks consistent with the level of the post and the scope of the role, ensuring that work is delivered in a timely and effective manner.
• Duties may vary from time to time without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility.