GP perceptions
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GPs highlighted the safety advantage of having PIPs within the multidisciplinary team, explaining that it was helpful to have ‘another pair of eyes’ to increase patient safety:Having a pharmacist who had good knowledge of all kinds of medications, going through polypharmacy, with a fine-tooth comb and picking up any errors or things we could do better. GP_21.GPs also drew on PIPs’ expertise of medicine administration for the wider benefit of CH residents, GPs explained that as PIPs could spend several hours within the home with a small number of residents, they could understand residents’ medicine needs in greater detail, ‘While GPs found it hard to quantify the impact of the intervention on their workload, on reflection they mostly described how they were now dealing with fewer daily enquiries from CHs. Where PIPs and GPs had established communication channels, the PIPs regularly identified residents and issues that the GP should look at in their weekly ward round:It has reduced the time taken to see patients as I can be confident their meds are all up to date, tests required for routine monitoring have been flagged up and I have been able to action these GP_3.Not all GPs agreed that the PIP intervention was a ‘natural fit’, rather one GP described a situation where they believed the intervention had increased their workload as the PIP had requested biochemical monitoring which was ‘