Pharmacists in General Practice: Repeat prescribing position statement

Published: 1 February 2019

(Scotland only)

Pharmacists bring their expertise in all aspects of medicines and their uses into the general practice team, and have a key role in ensuring safe prescribing systems are in place. This will involve the whole practice team, with everyone working within their own competency and to the best of their ability.

GPs require time with patients with complex medical issues. Pharmacists require time with those who have complex medication issues and those who require management of long term conditions.

Authorising/actioning repeat prescriptions and acute requests should not be the sole responsibility of one profession. It will require triage and efficient use of all prescribers in the practice and the wide skill mix available. It also requires working closely with community pharmacist colleagues to enrol suitable patients for serial prescribing and long-term conditions management in the Care and Review service.

The Competency Framework for all Prescribers, published by RCPharm in 2016, is multidisciplinary and clearly outlines what must be considered before signing prescriptions, whether face to face with patients or when prescribing remotely.

Each GP practice is unique, and flexibility in the pharmacotherapy service provided is required to prioritise care according to the needs of the patient, with an efficient use of the skill mix available.

The guiding principles for pharmacists working in GP practice can be found in the Joint Statement published by the Royal College of Pharmacy and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

You can also read our repeat prescribing toolkit here.

Patient health records

Pharmacists have a legitimate need to access patient health records, as the more information available to them when providing care to patients, the better the outcome for patients. Access to the patient’s health record, their laboratory results and previous treatment with medicines is routine for pharmacists working in hospitals, who would consider their practice unsafe without it. An overwhelming majority of the British public – 85% according to a YouGov poll in August 2014 – want every healthcare professional treating them to have secure electronic access to key data from their GP record. Access to the patient health record would improve patient safety Access to the patient health record would improve medicines adherence Access to the patient record would produce more robust records. As a first step toward access to the patient health record, the Royal College of Pharmacy (RCPharm) campaigned for all hospital and community pharmacies to have access to patients' summary care records. In June, the Health and Social Care Information Centre announced the national rollout of the SCR to community pharmacy, and £7.5m investment in the project. The RCPharm was delighted with the move and is now looking to the next step of full read and write access. We recommend that: NHS England should enable full read and write access to the patient health record for all pharmacists. Read-write access to health records should be available to all healthcare professionals in patients' interests. The RCPharm is advocating these positions through its representation on the Professional Record Standards Body and on the Health and Social Care Information Centre's Expert Advisory Committee on the Summary Care Record. Pharmacist access to the Patient Health Record is also supported by the All-Party Pharmacy Group of MPs, and is one of the themes of the RCPharm’s Shaping Pharmacy for the Future work. Our policy from 2014 supported pharmacist access to the Summary Care Record in England.

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