Vision:

Use pharmacists to reduce pressure on secondary care

Nigel Ratcliffe
Head of school of pharmacy, Keele University and chair, Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent NHS Trust

“My particular interest here is the role of the pharmacist. It is my belief that the training pharmacists receive is very much undervalued because of a lack of understanding of their skills.

“At the moment, there is a huge discussion as to whether there are too many pharmacists. But before we start looking at number reductions, let us start by looking at whether we are using pharmacists as effectively and as efficiently as we can, and whether all the opportunities to use pharmacists’ expertise are being grasped.

“Because 20,000 or more GPs are expected to retire by the end of the year, there is an extremely important role that pharmacists need to play – and that’s not just going into surgeries or checking dosages.

“We need to look towards greater partnership with all allied health professions, particularly GPs and those in acute settings, where pharmacists can take on more responsibility for prescribing of medicines, application of medicines, treatment post-diagnosis and screening.

“About 75 per cent of people who go to A&E will be admitted to hospital, which is on average £3,000-5,000 per night, so anything the pharmacist can do to prevent people going into the acute setting is huge.

“Once the diagnosis of the patient is known, the pharmacist can look at the best therapeutic agent for the patient in a rapidly developing arena of new therapies. Then, when the patient revisits the
surgery, the pharmacist can monitor what the outcomes of the therapy are – and these pharmacists are already available.

“It’s about the value of the pharmacist in the home of the patient and the pharmacist augmenting and working in synergy with GP surgeries. I believe there are some major, major savings to be made here.”

*For each hospital bed saved

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