Lead Pharmacist

Job description

Job responsibilities

We are looking for an experienced pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of Pharmacists in our General Practices. The postholder may work across the Practices with each of the practice teams and will be assigned a lead clinical and operational contact for each site.

In this role the postholder will work with further clinical pharmacists at a more junior level providing support and mentorship for these individuals. The practice will provide your role with excellent peer to peer support and clinical supervision to ensure you are well supported. You will also have strong working relationships with the Practice Managers and other clinicians in the organisation.

The successful candidate will join our multi-disciplinary team in providing comprehensive care and will work with patients, carers, and families in a patient-facing role. You will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the Practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities.

The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescription system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicine reconciliation on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, providing expertise in clinical medicines advice while addressing both public and social care needs of patients in the GP practices.

The post holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement, manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services and contribute to the delivery of the local medicines optimisation strategy.

The post holder will ensure that the practice integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to hep utilise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to health care and help manage workload. The role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies so requires motivation and passion to deliver excellent service within general practice.

Primary duties and areas of responsibility

From Start of Post

Patient facing long-term condition clinics

See patients in multimorbidity clinics and in partnership with primary healthcare colleagues and implement improvements to patients medicines, including de-prescribing.

Manage own case load and run long-term condition clinics where responsible for prescribing as an independent prescriber for conditions where medicines have a large component e.g. medicine optimisation for stable angina symptom control, warfarin monitoring and dose adjustment for patients requiring longterm anticoagulants.

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

Whilst carrying out the above ensure document appropriately to support achievement of relevant QOF targets.

Patient facing Clinical Medication Review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes as an independent prescriber and order relevant monitoring tests.

Patient facing care/residential home clinical medication reviews

Future potential to manage own caseload of care home residents.

Support and work with CCG Medicines Management MM Team to undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes as an independent prescriber and order relevant monitoring tests.

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 telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

Act as a source of medicines information for all of the practice team and patients, such as around doses, side effects, adverse events, possible alternatives, i.e. around out of stocks.

Suggesting and recommending solutions.

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.

Work in partnership with hospital and local provider colleagues e.g. care of the elderly doctors and clinical pharmacists to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care.

Managing of common or minor self-limiting ailments

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

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

Differential/un-differential diagnosis

Manage own caseload for patients and diagnose people with long term ailments while remaining within scope of practice and limits of competence. Referring to GP and or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

Signposting

Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the right care. Ensuring that the addition of the pharmacist to the clinical team results in a reduction in workload for other clinicians.

Unplanned Hospital Admissions

Work with case managers, multidisciplinary health and social care review teams, hospital colleagues and virtual ward teams to manage medicines-related risk for readmission and patient harm.

Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patient groups.

Repeat prescribing

Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy in line with the recommendations from the Medicines Management Team MMT, implement the practices 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.

Medicines Safety

Identify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use of medicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence form clinical trials. Manage the process of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners.

Frailty

Take a leading role in the contractual requirements to support frail patients with their medication including medication review and patient identification i.e. patients with problematic polypharmacy.

Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Work with CCG MMT to implement local and national guidelines including NICE etc.

Liaise with hospital colleagues where prescribing needs to be returned to specialists.

Education and Training

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

Provide training to visiting medical, nursing, pharmacy and other healthcare students where appropriate.

Care Quality Commission

Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved. Undertake risk assessment and ensure compliance with medicines legislation.

Public Health

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

Role May Evolve to Include

Patient facing domiciliary or home visits

Manage own caseload of vulnerable housebound patients at risk of hospital admission and harm from poor use of medicines. Implement own prescribing changes as an independent prescriber and ordering of monitoring tests.

Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences. Identifying key areas of need for vulnerable patients and formulating care plans.

Medicines Quality Improvement Programme

Working with colleagues, identify and provide leadership on areas of prescribing and medicines optimisation.

Conduct clinical audits and medicine optimisation projects or work with colleagues such as GP registrars, practice managers etc., feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Present results and provide leadership on suggested changes. Contribute to national and local research initiatives.

Telephone Triage

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 test results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc.

Person Specification

Experience

Desirable

• Experience working as a Pharmacist in Primary Care

Professional Registrations, Qualifications and Experience

Essential

• General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) Registration
• Masters degree in Pharmacy (MPHarm) or equivalent
• Independent Prescriber
• Minimum of 2 years experience post-qualification
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based medicine and healthcare
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing
• An appreciation of the nature of GPs and General Practice
• Good knowledge of service developments in medicines, prescribing, NHS policy and other relevant policy directives
• Good understanding of Primary Care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing
• Ability to solve problems effectively and timely and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and when to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate
• Excellent understanding and implementation of legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct
• Good understanding of patient centred care and impact on care quality and outcomes
• Good understanding of patients role in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidance
• 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)
• Ability to plan, prioritise, manage, monitor, advise and review clinical and general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions
• Good IT skills
• Ability to obtain and analyse complex technical information
• Ability to work under pressure and challenging situations to meet deadlines
• Produce timely and informative reports
• Experience of multi-disciplinary team working
• Experience of committees/working groups
• Drug information experience
• Experience in writing complex and high quality reports
• Experience in audit, research and analysis of highly complex information related to improving clinical quality
• Self-motivation
• Work effectively independently and as a team member
• 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.
• Adaptable
• Demonstrates ability to critically evaluate and review literature
• Demonstrates ability to identify where there is a gap in the evidence base to support practice
• Demonstrates ability to generate evidence suitable for presentation at local level
• Demonstrates ability to apply the research evidence base into working practice
• Demonstrates understanding of the principles of research governance
• Demonstrates ability to work as a member of the research team
• Demonstrates understanding of the Pharmacy role in governance and is able to implement this appropriately within the workplace
• Demonstrates understanding of, and contributes to organisational vision
• Demonstrates ability to improve quality within limitations of service
• Reviews progress and develops clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others
• Demonstrates ability to motivate self to achieve goals
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision
• Demonstrates understanding of the implications of national priorities for the team and/or service
• Demonstrates understanding of the process for effective resource utilisation
• Demonstrates understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards of practice

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• A member of or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• Clinical Diploma
• Experience in supervising staff
• Experience of independent patient consultation, review and recommendations/prescribing
• Demonstrates ability to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol

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.

Employer details

Employer name

The House Partnership

Address

Moat House Surgery

Worsted Green

Merstham

Redhill

RH1 3PN

Employer's website

https://www.greystonesurgery.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)