You are at least two years post qualification as a pharmacist and you have worked in a GP Practice for at least one year. You are a clinical practitioner and this is demonstrated through achieving an Independent Prescriber or other clinical post-graduate qualification that is relevant to the clinical practice of a GP practice based pharmacist. Alternatively, you have gained your relevant practice experience and knowledge through shadowing, supervised practice and self-directed learning.
You are much more confident in your practice and the majority of your time is spent in a level of clinical work that has required you to significantly extend the depth or breadth of your knowledge beyond your initial IP or postgraduate clinical qualification or beyond your initial shadowing/supervised practice or your self-directed learning experience.
You are working as a GP Practice pharmacist under one of the UK NHS Clinical Pharmacist in GP Practice schemes, or directly for a GP practice (either as an employee of the practice or through your Primary Care Organisation).
You confidently and routinely make firm recommendations to other members of the multidisciplinary team.
As an Advanced Level Practitioner, you may be taking responsibility for supervising or mentoring the work of other pharmacists. Whilst you recognise that it is good practice to do so, as an Advanced Level Practitioner, the changes that you make to a patients medication may not always need to be approved by another suitably qualified healthcare professional.
To achieve the status of Advanced Level Practitioner you have relied upon;
- Additional qualifications and/ or,
- Self-directed learning and/ or
- Experience through shadowing or supervised practice.
You recognise the ethical requirement for you to be working within the boundaries of your competency and the need to continuously develop your knowledge at all times. The boundaries of your competency will be much more extensive than when you were an Intern or a Basic level practitioner and you will regularly review and update these boundaries. We have provided a Boundaries of Clinical Practice Statement template that you may wish to use.
Helping you choose your level of competency in clinical practice
How would your describe the level of your practice?
Miller G. Academic Medicine. September Supplement 1990.