Waterloo Medical Centre

Clinical Practice Pharmacist

The closing date is 13 June 2025

Job summary

Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network Ltd has an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic Clinical Pharmacist to join our team at Waterloo Medical Centre on a fixed term contract for 6 months to cover Maternity Leave.

Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network Ltd consists of the following practices:

Waterloo Medical Centre
Bloomfield Medical Centre

This post will be based and working at Waterloo Medical Centre.

Waterloo Medical Centre is well established in the community and has a patient population of over 12000 patients. The practice consists of 5 GP Partners, 1 Salaried GP, 3 Practice Nurses, 1 HCA, 1 Nursing Associate, 1 Physiotherapist, 2 Pharmacists, 1 Pharmacy Technician and 12 Admin/Reception staff. We are a busy friendly forward thinking practice. Waterloo Medical Centre is a training practice that has 2 GP Registrars.

Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting transformation programme to develop a new model of care, addressing our ambition to deliver person-centred, coordinated care across the Practice and Primary Care Network.

The Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice model is supported by the Five Year Forward View and GP Forward View to develop and utilise the role of pharmacy within primary care so it can pro-actively help patients stay safe, well and out of hospital as well as supporting efforts to reduce the demands on general practice.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in General Practice, including promotion of repeat dispensing and online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.

To work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using extensive experience and in-depth knowledge to be directly responsible for care and prescribing of defined cohort(s) of patients

To deliver and develop pharmacy led medicines optimisation working with general practice and the wider multidisciplinary team, ensuring practice remains up to date

To lead and promote, support, and facilitate medicines optimisation for specialist area in the wider medicines agenda ensuring best value, reduced harm and improved outcomes.
To lead and deliver evaluation and audit of service delivery for specialist area in order to ensure a high-quality service and to further develop provision.
To work to the principles of Medicines Optimisation and relevant up to date national guidelines and evidence base.
To support the Prescribing Lead with the medicines agenda within the practice

About us

Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network Ltd consists of the following practices:

Bloomfield Medical Centre
Waterloo Medical Centre

Bloomfield Medical Centre is a 8 Partner GP Practice Primary Care provider based over two sites in Blackpool, Bloomfield Medical Centre on Bloomfield Road and Grange Park Health Centre on Dinmore Avenue. Our services are diverse, forward-thinking enabling us to deliver care to meet local priorities in relation to deprivation, chronic disease, improved access, migration from secondary care and more efficient commissioning.

We provide high quality general medical care to a registered list of over 17,000 patients over the two sites, through our dedicated team of clinical, administrative and management professionals including 8 GP Partners, Salaried doctors, Clinical Pharmacists, Advanced Clinical Practitioners, Nurse Practitioners, Practice Nurses and Healthcare Assistants.

Date posted

02 June 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 8a

Salary

Depending on experience

Contract

Fixed term

Duration

6 months

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

A2720-25-0001

Job locations

Waterloo Medical Centre

178 Waterloo Road

Blackpool

Lancashire

FY4 3AD

Job description

Job responsibilities

Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas.

Provide pharmaceutical consultations to patients with long term conditions as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team.

Provide proactive leadership on medicines and prescribing systems to the practice team, patients, and their carers.

Improve patient and carer understanding of confidence in and compliance with their medication.

Provide advice and answer medication related queries from patients and staff

Organise and oversee the practices medicines optimisation systems including the repeat prescribing and medication review systems.

Work with the GP Practices within the Primary Care Network to support them with implementation of the PCN DES and day-to-day general practice.

Promote high quality, cost-effective prescribing in primary care, supporting the specifications within the PCN DES, including Structured Medication Reviews, Enhanced Health in Care Homes and other medicines optimisation tasks as determined by the Practice / PCN.

Improve the quality and effectiveness of prescribing through clinical audit and education to improve performance against NICE standards, and clinical and prescribing guidance.

Develop yourself and the role through participation in clinical supervision, training, and service redesign activities.

Contribute to a patient safety culture through reporting and investigation of medicines incidents and undertaking proactive measures to improve patient safety.

Work with community pharmacists, hospital pharmacists, and other stakeholders in the medicines supply chain to improve patient experience and manage incidents.

Deliver training, mentoring and guidance to other clinicians and staff on medicine issues.

Respond to prescription requests from community patients, nursing/care home staff, pharmacy staff and GPs, processing them within recognised timescales (e.g. 48 hours for routine prescriptions and same day for urgent prescriptions). This can include re-routing prescriptions to out of hours pharmacies for same day delivery.

Process monthly prescriptions for nursing/care homes, checking for changes and adherence/over-ordering issues.

Use practice/ICB templates to record near patient monitoring for high-risk drugs.

Identify blood tests, recalls and reviews using established protocols and forward these to the appropriate clinician.

Support and respond to medicines-related queries from medical and nursing colleagues and from patients and relatives via face to face, via phone or via email. Queries can include issues with interactions or ADRs, availability of stock, swallowing difficulties, cost-effectiveness, urgent requests or extra supplies.

Review hospital discharge notifications and outpatient hospital letters and reconcile medication against current repeats, flagging up and correcting discrepancies.

Promote safe use of medication, reporting of medicines-related incidents and pro-actively preventing safeguarding incidents.

Use knowledge of GP computer prescribing systems and community pharmacy dispensing systems to advise on solving problems related to prescribing/dispensing and other areas to develop the skills of practice and pharmacy staff.

Support the review of care home procedures, making recommendations for potential improvements.

Observe the principles of clinical governance when developing policies, protocols, guidelines, SOPs and procedures.

Support practice prescribing budgets by on-going monitoring, audit and analysis of drug use and support practices in reviewing, developing and enhancing cost-effective prescribing. This includes staying aware of latest QIPP and other cost targets.

Help review medication with the pharmacists and make recommendations for prescribing changes to improve outcome and ensure prescribing of the most cost-effective product.