Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

Primary Duties and Areas of Responsibility

Patient facing longterm condition clinics

See (where appropriate) 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 GPs 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 medicinerelated 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) and ensuring that the appropriate monitoring is taking place.

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.

Please view the job description document for the full description.

Qualifications

Essential

• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent.
• Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent prescribing qualification.

Desirable

• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 2 years post qualification experience.
• An appreciation of the nature of GPs and general practices.
• 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).
• 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.
• Work effectively independently and as a team member.
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.

Desirable

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare.
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing
• Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• 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.

Professional Registration

Essential

• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council.

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• A member of or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Other

Essential

• Self-Motivated.
• Adaptable.

Desirable

• Full Driving Licence.
• Safeguarding adult and children level three.
• Information Governance toolkit completion.

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).