A ‘walk in my shoes’ project in Lewisham has allowed GPs, clinical and administrative practice staff to visit community pharmacies to gain some practical insight into the working environment of community pharmacy with community pharmacists and their team members also having the opportunity to spend time in GP practices to better understand the working environment of general practice.

The ‘walk in my shoes’ project is part of the Medicine Optimisation Education Training (MOET) programme, which was created to develop medicine optimisation activities in the Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area.

The aim of the innovative ‘walk in my shoes’ project was to provide an environment that allowed GPs and their staff, and pharmacists and their teams to be more aware of the patient issues and gaps in the medicine prescribing, ordering and dispensing processes. Forty-two General Practices and 45 pharmacies in Lewisham signed up to be involved in the project.

During January-April 2015 there have been more than 100 appointments between GP practices and pharmacies. After each visit, each participant is asked to complete a reflection sheet to capture their experience compared to their expectation. Each participating practice or pharmacy is also required to complete an action plan highlighting three areas of practice identified during the learning process to improve patient safety, improve patient outcomes or reduce waste.

The reflection sheets and action plans are currently being collated from GP practices and pharmacies, and these will be used by Lewisham CCG, who is working with Medway School of Pharmacy, to extract further learning from the project.

Jayesh Patel, CEO of Lambeth, Southwark & Lewisham LPC, said:

“I have received really positive feedback from both GPs and pharmacists who have been involved in the project. Both professions have said the process was beneficial for them and their teams to break down barriers and to understand and share problems that each profession is facing. I hope this project will encourage more joined up work between GP surgeries and community pharmacies in the future”.

Find your toolkit here: http://psnc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/PSNC-Briefing-041.17-Walk-in-my-Shoes-toolkit.pdf