Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

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.

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

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses or GPs on prescribing and monitoring.

Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring.

Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

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

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

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

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

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

Suggest and recommend solutions.

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

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 high risk patient groups across the Network.

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 high-risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).

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.

Review and update practice repeat prescribing policies with a view to creating Network policies adopted by all 5 practices.

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.

Support the development or review of procedures to ensure patients have appropriate monitoring in place and work towards Network SOPs based on best practice.

Identify 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.

Share findings across the Network to ensure uptake of best practice

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), ensuring good Network communication and uptake of new practice across the Network.

Analyse, interpret and present medicines data from the Network to highlight issues and risks to support decision making and promote quality improvement.

Undertake clinical audits of prescribing, feedback the results and implement changes via Network meetings.

Work with the Network Pharmacists to ensure Network implementation of changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.

Support all practices to ensure there is an effective procedure in place to implement actions identified in MHRA alerts.

Monitor each practices prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list/Dashboard 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. Work towards a Network formulary.

Audit practices' compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance and share findings across the Network and support implementation of quality improvements.

Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages to the Network.

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

Work with the general practice teams to ensure the practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

Support public health campaigns.

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

Line management of practice pharmacy technician, where in post.

Qualifications

Essential

• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (or equivalent).
• Minimum of 2 years post qualification experience.

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.
• Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent prescribing qualification.
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare.

Experience

Essential

• 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.
• 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.
• Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate.
• 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.
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Good IT skills.
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information.
• Produce timely and informative reports.
• Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines.
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.
• Needs to have a thorough understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships.

Desirable

• Working knowledge of SystmOne.

Other

Essential

• Self-Motivation
• Adaptable
• In date DBS
• Safeguarding adult and children level three
• Immunisation status
• Basic life support training

Desirable

• Full Driving Licence

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).