Responding to face to face queries in a (NHS or similar) walk in centre
As the pressures on primary and secondary care increase, increasingly, patients are being encouraged to attend an NHS (or similar) walk in centre. Such walk in centres may employ nurses, and other healthcare professionals. More recently, pharmacists are being encouraged to participate in walk in centre work.
Responding to face to face queries from patients involves diagnosis and also triage and it is recognised that pharmacists have been involved in one form of face to face diagnosis or another for many years.
Predominantly, this has occurred in a community pharmacy where ‘walk in’ customers ask pharmacists to help them out with minor ailments. These are relatively anonymous and usually transient transactions; typically there are no comprehensive patient’s records available. The community pharmacists in these transactions do not hold themselves out to be the definitive answer to the ills of the patient. The patients are usually told to go to their GP if their condition does not resolve itself in a few days. In such circumstances, patients generally accept that if their condition does not clear up, then that means that they should make an appointment to see their GP or to attend another NHS service.
The fact that the new walk in centres are seen by the public as being one of these ‘NHS services’ is changing the risk profile for the healthcare staff involved in the provision of the walk in centre services.
An NHS walk in centre is seen by many patients as being a kind of NHS A&E style service, where they can attend and get their often acute condition resolved or where they would receive a further referral.
In many walk in centres, unlike an A&E department however, the team is relatively small, there are usually no doctors in attendance and access to patient records is not guaranteed. All of this makes the possibility of a pharmacist making a second check on a diagnosis or a clinical decision that much more difficult.
The service, which is undoubtedly a highly beneficial adjunct to the overstretched NHS, creates a much greater expectation to getting it right first time, not just in the mind of the patient, but also by the legal system in the event of a civil claim for compensation should a misdiagnosis occur.
Indemnity cover for work in an NHS (or similar) walk in centre is excluded from the main PDA members scheme, but it is available upon direct application as a standalone insurance scheme provided by independent underwriters.
Equally, the underwriters providing solely the walk in centre cover will not provide the much wider indemnity cover and other benefits as provided by PDA membership.
To enjoy the wide range of indemnity and other benefits provided by dint of PDA membership pharmacists should complete their standard PDA membership application and then make contact with the specialist underwriters as a separate exercise.
Pharmacists are invited to call 0121 694 6897 or contact piacommercial.com for more details of the specialist independent underwriters.