Clinical Pharmacist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Patient facing Long term condition clinics

See patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma).

Review the on-going need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines taking ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation).

Make appropriate recommendations to Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.

Patient facing Clinical Medication Review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.

Patient facing care home medication reviews

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacist, nurses or GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

Patient facing domiciliary clinical medication review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacists, nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

Management of common/minor/self limiting ailments

Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence.

Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate

Patient facing medicines support

Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice

Telephone medicines support

Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

Answers relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.

Suggesting and recommending solutions.

Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes

Unplanned hospital admissions

Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews.

Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to highrisk patient groups.

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital

To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes, including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge.

Set up and manage systems to ensure continuity of medicines supply to highrisk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).

Signposting

Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc.

Repeat prescribing

Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy.

Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review.

Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.

Risk stratification

Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches. This might include risks that are patient related, medicine related, or both.

Service development

Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).

Information management

Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.

Medicines quality improvement

Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Medicines safety

Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.

Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economys RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).

Assist practices in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system.

Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.

Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

Education and Training

Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.

Care Quality Commission

Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

Public health

To support public health campaigns.

To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 2 years postqualification experience.
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare.
• An appreciation of the nature of GPs and general practices
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g.
• patients)
• Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• Good IT skills
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information
• Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate
• Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines
• Produce timely and informative reports
• Gain acceptance for recommendations and influence/motivate/ persuade the audience to comply with the recommendations/agreed course of action where there may be significant barriers
• Work effectively independently and as a team member
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision

Other

Essential

• Self-Motivation
• Adaptable
• Full Driving Licence
• In date CRB
• Safeguarding adult and children level three
• Information Governance toolkit completion
• Immunisation status
• Basic life support
• training

Qualifications

Essential

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council
• Minimum of 2 years experience as a pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (or equivalent)
• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience
• Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent prescribing qualification

Desirable

• Have experience and an awareness of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice
• May hold or be working towards an independent prescribing qualification.
• Recognises priorities when problem-solving and identifies deviations from normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate
• Able to follow legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct
• Involves patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidelines. NB: it is anticipated level of qualification held may vary according to the level of position and the components of the role being carried out

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

West Hove Primary Care Network

Address

Church Road

Portslade

Brighton

BN41 1LX

Employer's website

https://www.portsladehealthcentre.co.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)