You’ve navigated the complexities of the current recruitment market, conducted a rigorous interview process, and hired a talented clinical pharmacist you’re genuinely excited about. Day one arrives. They’re keen to get started, but by lunchtime, progress has stalled. They can’t get the right IT access, and nobody seems to have a clear answer on the practice’s process for reauthorising repeat prescriptions.
It’s a frustratingly common scenario… But the good news is, it’s entirely preventable.
A successful placement isn’t just about finding the right person; it’s about creating the right environment for them to succeed from the moment they start. At Medacy, we see onboarding as a dual process: we onboard our pharmacist into our team, and then we partner with you to onboard them into your practice. We’ve managed this process hundreds of times, and we’ve learned that an informed start is the single most significant predictor of long-term success.
The Onboarding Gap: Why GP Practices Struggle
So why does this happen? In my experience, it’s because crucial operational knowledge in a busy GP practice often “lives in people’s heads.” Unlike hospitals or large community pharmacies with comprehensive Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for everything, processes in primary care are often undocumented. The knowledge is available, but it’s held by individuals who are already overextended.
When this information isn’t written down, a new starter is forced to constantly interrupt busy colleagues for basic information, significantly delaying their effectiveness. The solution is simple in theory, but requires discipline: get the essential processes down on paper before they start.
The Three Pillars of a Successful Onboarding
To avoid the Day One disconnect, we focus on three core pillars. Getting these right will transform your onboarding from a reactive scramble into a proactive strategy.
Pillar 1: Process – Getting a Head Start on Day One
To ensure you are making the most of your new pharmacist, it’s vital to have a clear guide for their role and its associated workflows. Before your new pharmacist arrives, take the time to document your answers to a few key questions, including:
- Medication Review: What is your standard policy for annual monitoring, long term condition reviews and medication reviews?
- Reauthorisation: How are repeat prescriptions reauthorised? Is it linked to a birth month, an annual review, or another system?
- Document Workflow and Triage : What is the exact journey of a clinical document? Who is responsible for coding, actioning GP requests, and filing? Who triages documents before they reach the pharmacist to ensure they are seeing only relevant information?
Having clear answers to these questions provides immediate clarity and allows your new hire to be effective from their first morning.
Pillar 2: People – Setting Clear Expectations
Onboarding is the perfect time to align expectations—and this is a two-way street. A structured process means the new joiner is well aware of what is expected of them, but it also clarifies what they can expect from the practice. This simple step helps prevent potential surprises and misunderstandings further down the road.
One of the most common points of friction we see is a mismatch in expectations around time. I was recently told of a situation where a GP expected a full, high-quality medication review to be completed in ten minutes. This comes from a misunderstanding of the role. A quick check by a GP and a comprehensive Structured Medication Review by a pharmacist are two different things. The latter is a forensic, patient-safety-focused process that delivers huge value, but it cannot be rushed. It’s about ensuring quality of care vs. just ticking a box.
Given the high costs of replacing staff, aligning expectations for both parties right at the start is a small investment that saves a huge amount of time, money, and frustration in the long term.
Pillar 3: IT, Access and Estates – Nailing the Practicalities
Whether your pharmacist is working remotely or on-site, the practicalities must be sorted before they start. Nothing holds up a smooth onboarding process like not having the correct access for your new joiners.
For on-site staff, the biggest challenge can often be physical space. A pharmacist needs a private, confidential room for patient consultations. This is a significant hurdle for many practices dealing with the broader challenge of NHS estates.
For remote workers, IT is everything. Smartcard access, VPNs, and the correct system rights (e.g., as a prescriber, not a dispenser) must be in place and tested before Day One. For our own projects, we also insist on having system access for our senior clinical leads (so we can provide oversight and quality assurance).
This isn’t about micromanagement; it’s a critical safety and quality feature. It allows our experts to provide proactive supervision and support, often spotting and resolving issues before the practice is even aware of them.
The Medacy Way: Onboarding as a Managed Service
Our commitment is first and foremost to quality patient care and to providing meaningful support that eases the workload of your practice. A successful onboarding isn’t just an administrative task for us; it’s the foundation upon which we build a safe, effective, and high-quality clinical service.
Our commitment is first and foremost to quality patient care and to providing meaningful support that eases the workload of your practice. We take the general principles of a good onboarding and put them into a robust, proprietary system.
This is what we mean by a managed service. When you work with Medacy, you aren’t just getting a pharmacist; you’re getting our entire quality framework, which is built on three specific actions:
The Remote Worker Checklist (RWC): The process points mentioned earlier are just a small sample of our comprehensive RWC. This invaluable document is the first step we take with any new partner, ensuring every single operational process is clearly defined and documented before Day One, leaving nothing to chance.
The Clinical Onboarding Meeting: Once the processes are mapped, a dedicated Clinical Services Lead meets with you to agree on the specifics of the service. This is a collaborative session designed to tailor our support to what will best serve your practice and patients, ensuring expectations are perfectly aligned.
IT Setup and Clinical Oversight: We manage the practicalities of IT access for the pharmacist, but uniquely, we also require system access for our senior clinical team. This isn’t about micromanagement; it’s our quality guarantee. It allows our senior experts to provide proactive clinical supervision, support performance, and ensure ongoing development for our team members embedded in yours.
The value of our onboarding process is that it guarantees this level of quality from the very start. If you want to unlock the full potential of your clinical pharmacist from Day One, find out more about our fully-managed service.
Get Your Clinical Pharmacists Off To a Flying Start
Investing time and thought into a structured onboarding process pays huge dividends in the long run. It transforms a potentially slow and frustrating first few weeks into a flying start, building a strong foundation for a successful partnership that benefits the pharmacist, the practice, and ultimately, your patients.
