Pharmacy pressures impacting care homes, suggests CQC survey

How can pharmacy teams support care homes?
PharmAssist owner Ashley Cohen also told The Pharmacist that community pharmacists and their teams are well placed to support care home medicines management - not just in the supply of medication for residents, but in supporting staff training and induction, supporting with writing medication management policies, procedures & SOPs, and auditing the care home's practice against current policies.
He said that within the PharmAssist group, some pharmacy staff were employed to work across both community pharmacy and care homes, where they could support care home staff with good medicines practice, which he said helps to integrate pharmacy teams within the wider care home family.
The pharmacy group also offers care homes annual audits and has developed a suite of training programme to support care home staff with skills such as MAR [Medicine Administration Record] charts, medication administration, working with controlled drugs, homely remedies and reducing errors when giving out medication to residents. It offers this training to care homes at a cost.
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Meanwhile, primary care network pharmacist Laura Buckley told The Pharmacist about her work reviewing medications for care home residents and responding to referrals from various care homes teams including those specialising in falls, diet or swallowing.
She said: 'I've built up a really good relationship with the care homes. They know me well. They know what kinds of queries they can come to me with.
'Often I will visit care homes to review one resident, and there'll be a list of things for me to support them with for other residents as well. Because of our long standing, well known knowledge in the area of medicines and medicine administration, care homes know pharmacists are more than capable of providing that advice and support, and they know we're willing to offer that support.'
As a PCN pharmacist, she said she works alongside the community pharmacy team, who the care home can also contact for support. In particular Ms Buckley highlighted that as a prescriber, she was able to to work with the community pharmacy team, the patient, and the carers, to supply alternative medicines in the case of stock shortage.
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She said that care homes and residents also particularly valued the structured medication review and deprescribing service she could offer.
'We'll reduce medicines burden, and it also means we reduce excess stock, and if things have been over prescribed or over ordered, and it means that we ensure the appropriate monitoring is in place for residents. And if they're having any difficulties with medicines administration, I can resolve that there and then, on the spot when I go in. And we can change directions, or we can change the form of the product that we issue.'
Ms Buckley also told The Pharmacist about how she worked across a multidisciplinary neighbourhood team that includes the frailty team, the bladder and bowel team, the district nursing team and the care homes themselves.
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'Often these various services work independently, and there can be barriers to communication. We're not always aware of what each other is doing,' she said.
Ms Buckley said the teams had 'already learned a lot about each other' and were looking at ways of streamlining their processes.
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