Phillippa Crockford (centre) with (left to right) Maninder Singh,
Patrick Karikari, Shri Arora and Nakul Arora who have all completed
the medicines management course |
Neighbourhood Renewal Fund
“This project shows how flexible the Neighbourhood Renewal
Fund is,” says Georgina Craig, head of communications and
partnership development for the Company Chemists’ Association.
“The
fund aims to enable the 88 most deprived local authorities in England,
in conjunction with their local strategic partnerships, to improve
services and to narrow the gaps between the health services available
in these deprived areas and those in the rest of the country,” she
adds.
“The CCA and the National Pharmacy Association have
both championed pharmacists becoming involved with local strategic
partnerships,” she says.
“If pharmacists make a flexible
enough case for how they can use the funding to improve local health
services, then there are enormous opportunities for using the Neighbourhood
Renewal Fund to finance pharmacist-led initiatives.” |
Phillippa Crockford, principal clinical pharmacist at Newham
Primary Care Trust and Newham University Hospital Trust, has for a long
time
been a keen advocate of developing the clinical skills of community pharmacists.
In early 2004, it was announced that the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund had £40,000
still available from its 2003–4 budget for her local area , so
Ms Crockford and Jan Tomes, head of medicines and prescribing at Newham
PCT, decided to put in a bid for funding to develop the medicine management
skills of community pharmacists.
“We initially considered providing funding to put a handful of pharmacists
through an MSc course.” Ms Crockford says. “But then we decided
that the money would be better spent providing clinical training to a
larger group of community pharmacists.”
Ms Crockford persuaded the director of primary care and the LPC that
the PCT would gain more from developing community pharmacists as a group
than funding just a few selected people for an MSc.
The PCT successfully applied, in March 2004, to the Neighbourhood Renewal
Fund for £40,000 funding to deliver the project.
Ms Crockford wanted the training to be twofold — funding places
on a distance learning medicines management course provided by Keele
University as well as a series of local training days. She also wanted
as many pharmacists as possible to apply to be involved so that the PCT,
and those involved with the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, could see that
the demand for the training was there.
The invitation to participate was open to all Newham community pharmacists.
In fact, over a third applied. Initially, selection criteria were set
so that the course was only offered to pharmacists who were already working
in GPs’ surgeries or offering additional pharmacy services such
as smoking cessation or minor ailments services. But Ms Crockford was
able to demonstrate how many pharmacists were interested in taking the
course and thereby secure extra funding from the PCT so that all the
pharmacists who applied to take the course could be accepted.
The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund paid for vouchers for locum cover for
the pharmacists’ time on the training days and two study days as
well as the fees for the Keele University medicines management course.
Additional funding for revenue and refreshments was provided by a pharmaceutical
company.
“Once I put in the bid I knew that, if it were successful, we would
have to spend all the money within four weeks,” Ms Crockford says.
It is important, therefore, she argues, to have bids prepared in advance
in case suitable funds become available.
The pharmacists had to commit to attending all the study days and the
replacement locum rate was set at £175 per day, so that the pharmacists
taking part could invoice the PCT for that amount in advance of having
to pay the locum fees themselves. Keele University also agreed to process
the applications and invoice the PCT within the four-week time frame.
To date, 22 Newham community pharmacists have completed the programme. “We
were lucky, in terms of recruiting pharmacists to the course, in already
having a cohort of clinically interested community pharmacists,” Ms
Crockford says.
Ms Crockford has been running “Pharmacy forum” meetings every
other month since 2001 with the support of the local Centre for Pharmacy
Postgraduate Education tutor, Karen Rosenbloom, and Prashant Sanghani,
now chief pharmacist at Newham University Hospital Trust. “The
meetings provided an opportunity for local community pharmacists to meet
to discuss issues affecting them,” she says.
The local training days Ms Crockford organised included presentations
on national and local guidance, and participants gained experience in
applying guidance to problem-solving case studies, some of which were
studies of actual patients. “The cases were discussed with specialist
nurses, who were able to offer a practical perspective, and expert patients
also came in to discuss problems with their conditions in an open forum,” she
explains. In addition, specialist clinical team members taught and assessed
the pharmacists on how to measure cardiac, diabetic and respiratory clinical
parameters, as well as on medication reviews for old people, pain management
and gastro-intestinal problems, she adds.
The Keele University distance-learning course involved completing four
written assessments. The pharmacists taking part were sent a large file
of reference papers, personal assessment exercises and reflection exercises
to be completed during the course of the year. The course’s study
day at Keele University was a key component of the training, Ms Crockford
says. “Having to complete a formal university-accredited assessment
required pharmacists to engage individually with their clinical training
development.”
Ms Crockford hopes to develop the clinical skills of the community pharmacists
in the PCT even further. “I don’t see that every community
pharmacist can provide clinical pharmacy services within a GP practice — that
simply doesn’t make economic sense, because of the cost of replacement
locum cover. But it does make sense for community pharmacists to develop
clinical skills that they can use to help patients in their own pharmacies.” |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal