By Neil Trainis

Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care System has launched a public awareness campaign to make people understand why they may be offered appointments with other health professionals instead of a doctor, including a video that suggested GP pharmacists do “additional” training to help them manage “more complex patients” in primary care.

The campaign contains a variety of videos from health professionals who explain their roles in GP surgeries, including a primary care paramedic, first contact physio, social prescriber, care co-ordinator and a pharmacist called Becky, who explained what pharmacists in practices do.

She said one “key difference” between GP pharmacists and other members of the team in practices is that “clinical” pharmacists can spend much more time than GPs talking to patients about their medicines, with a particular focus on those who are on 10 or more medications.

“We can take up to half an hour for a medication review, so we can really go in-depth and look at every medication, which is something the GP often wouldn’t have time to do,” she said.

“We’re the experts in medication, so we’re able to go into a little bit more detail. One of the things we focus on is patients who are on large numbers of medications, so typically 10 or more. We will go through the list of medications in detail, look at why everything was started and make sure it’s still appropriate.

“A medication we may have started for someone who’s in their 50s may not be appropriate when they’re in their 70s. We’ve got access to blood results and monitoring information so we can alter dosages.”

On the “additional” training GP pharmacists take, she said: “Our community pharmacist colleagues have completed a master’s degree and a year’s training but when we moved into primary care, we do that additional pathway just to help us manage some of the more complex patients that we can see within primary care.”

The ICB’s campaign launched as leading figures in community pharmacy question the value GP pharmacists bring to patient care.

In May, Rowlands Pharmacy ’s superintendent pharmacist Stephen Thomas urged NHS England to conduct and publish a study to prove its recruitment of pharmacists into GP practices is making the most of their skills and providing value for money.

This week, Phoenix UK group managing director Steve Anderson said he was “at a loss to understand” how primary care pharmacist roles have “improved patient access to essential NHS care, support and advice” and accused NHS England of “a misallocation of scarce public funding .”

And last month, Company Chemists’ Association chief executive Malcolm Harrison said the £387 million spent by NHS England on additional roles reimbursement scheme funding for pharmacists between 2019 and 2022 was “short-sighted” and had “directly led to the shortfall of community pharmacists in England.”