Since April 2016, PICS has been involved in NHS England’s Clinical Pharmacist pilots in the Nottingham West and Ashfield areas. The scheme has been piloted over 4 years, enabling practices to access funding to support the employment of Clinical Pharmacists in General Practices. The pilots were launched to help support the increasing demands in General Practice by subsidising employment of clinical pharmacists. A broad range of tasks can be undertaken with the right training and mentoring, which is all included as part of the training for the pilot. This includes medication reviews, supporting discharges from hospitals, medication queries and long term conditions management. There are 6 participating practices in Nottingham West and 6 participating practices in Ashfield. The Clinical pharmacists work in teams typically of 6,  with a senior clinical pharmacist supporting up to 5 clinical pharmacists.

PICS have also been successful in winning a bid for funding from NHS England to support the employment of Clinical Pharmacists to work in general practice across the whole of Mansfield and Ashfield and Newark and Sherwood Clinical Commissioning Group. In addition, PICS has helped the Nottingham City GP Alliance to implement their clinical pharmacy Programme, and has recently been asked to help Nottingham North and East for their programme. The programme manager has also provided advice and guidance to Rushcliffe practice clinical pharmacy programme.

These local Clinical Pharmacist activities have been shortlisted as a finalist in 2017 and 2018 Chemist and Druggist awards for GP Pharmacy partnership of the year, and was awarded “Runner Up” both times. (http://picsnhs.org.uk/2018/07/26/chemist-and-druggist-awards-2018-gp-pharmacy-partnership-of-the-year-runner-up/)

Local programmes have been independently evaluated by the University of Nottingham, School of Pharmacy, who have confirmed it was a very successful programme from patients, GPs and Pharmacist perspectives.

The service has resulted in

• Helping patients to gain better understanding of their medicines.
• Helping patients get better use of their medicines.