Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

Key duties and responsibilities

• Support PCN Pharmacy Technicians.
• Clinical medication reviews.
• Clinical medication reviews for people who live in Care Homes.
• Patient-facing clinics for people living with long-term conditions.
• Receive on-the-day referrals for patients needing advice and guidance.
• Receive referrals from Practice colleagues, or direct from patients.
• Contact patients by telephone or secure electronic means (eg, email or video via askmyGP) and offer advice and support to patients who have questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
• Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments.
• Medicine information to practice staff and patients.
• Signposting.
• Repeat prescribing.
• Offer support, education and training to others.
• Support reduction in unplanned hospital admissions.
• Management of medicines after discharge from hospital.
• Reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care, and admissions to Care Homes.
• Support public health campaigns.
• Safety netting in all contact with patients, check for interactions, contraindications, and red flags and offer safety-netting advice and follow-up where appropriate.
• Risk stratification and identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines using clinical databases (SystmOne, Ardens, Eclipse etc).
• Information management, contemporary research and service development.
• Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
• Medicines quality improvement and medicines safety.
• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team.
• Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
• Work with the general practice teams to ensure the Practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved. Support Practices with CQC inspections.
• Communicating key updates to Practice colleagues.
• Offer support to Practices to ensure that their systems of communicating and recording alerts and significant events is robust.
• Support implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations.
• Monitor Practice prescribing against the local dashboards.
• Supporting the PCN Network DES.
• Collaborative working.
• The post holder will be expected to participate in multi-disciplinary team meetings when required.
• Utilise and demonstrate sensitive communication styles, to ensure patients are fully informed and give consent.
• Build positive working relationships with colleagues in order to deliver good outcomes for patients, Network Practices, and the PCN.
• Use electronic communication platforms (email, SystmOne, Microsoft Teams and so on) to communicate effectively with colleagues and other organisations.
• Professional development and mandatory training.
• Engage with clinical supervision, and managerial supervision to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present.
• Keep up to date with relevant clinical practice and demonstrate a contemporary understanding of relevant local and national policies and guidelines, and updates to these.
• Professional registration. The post-holderwill need to be a qualified Pharmacist, registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council. It is the post-holders responsibility to ensure their registration is up to date, or flag any issues to their line manager.
• Medio-legal indemnity arrangements will be funded to an appropriate level by the PCN, but it is the post-holders responsibility to ensure that cover is up-to-date and of the required level, and that they do not work outside the scope of Practice, indemnity, or competency.
• The post-holder will take responsibility for their own health and safety and wellbeing, and take reasonable steps to ensure the same for other persons, including acts of omission.
• Communicate, in a timely manner, any concerns about risk.
• The post-holder will ensure they are up to date with mandatory training around risk (Infection control, moving and handling, Basic Life Support etc).
• Confidentiality
• Safeguarding. The post-holder has a responsibility to make all reasonable efforts to safeguard adults and children at risk, and promote their welfare, by following the practice policy, keeping up to date with training and learning, and communicating issues of concern urgently.
• Equality and diversity. The post-holder will support the equality, diversity and rights of patients, carers and colleagues.
• Special working conditions. The post holder is required to travel independently between work sites and to attend meetings etc hosted by other agencies. In the course of clinical practice, the post-holder may be exposed to body fluids, i.e. wound exudates, urine and so on, and the risks this may bring. The post-holder will have access to Personal Protective Equipment and is expected to comply with all infection control and health and safety policies and protocols accordingly.
• Variation. Duties may vary from time to time, without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility.

More detail can be found in the uploaded Job Description and Person Specification document.

Personal Qualities & Attributes

Essential

• - Ability to organise, plan and prioritise workload on own initiative.
• - Adaptable and resilient.
• - Able to work well under pressure, and meet agreed deadlines.
• - Demonstrates personal accountability, and is able to recognise personal limitations and ask for support / refer to more appropriate colleagues when necessary.
• - Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• - Adapts communication styles and interpersonal skills to best gain the cooperation of relevant stakeholders (including patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other NHS/private organisations, e.g. CCGs).
• - Ability to maintain effective working relationships and to promote collaborative practice with all colleagues.
• - Ability to identify risk and assess/manage risk when working with individuals.
• - Committed to reducing health inequalities and proactively working to reach people from all communities.
• - Committed to engaging with organisational policies, including safe working practices, mandatory training and supervision and appraisal.
• - Willingness to work flexibly when needs of service, or patients, require.
• - Good fit with PCN and Practice teams.

Desirable

• Excellent fit with PCN and Practice teams.

Additional attributes

Essential

• - Satisfactory DBS check result.
• - Satisfactory employment references.
• - Ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including home visits if required.

Desirable

• - Satisfactory proof of immunisation.
• - Driver with access to own vehicle.

Qualifications

Essential

• - Completion of an undergraduate degree in Pharmacy.
• - Registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• - Hold, or be willing to work towards, an Independent Prescribing qualification.

Desirable

• - Up to date with Safeguarding and other mandatory training.
• - Further formal qualification(s) in relevant Pharmaceutical / Pharmacological area.

Experience

Essential

• - Minimum of three years experience as a Pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• - Experience and an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-terms conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice.
• - Experience of partnership/collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations.

Desirable

• - More than three years experience as a Pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.

Professional registration

Essential

• - Current registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.

Desirable

• - Up to date professional indemnity, at suitable level for area of work performed.

Skills and knowledge

Essential

• - Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• - An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing.
• - Demonstrates and understanding of, and conformity to, relevant Standards of Practice.
• - Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures relating to performance management.
• - Able to plan, manage, monitor and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• - Able to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol.
• - Demonstrable understanding of the principles and importance of Clinical Governance.
• - Knowledge of IT systems, including ability to use word processing skills, emails and the internet to create simple plans and reports.
• - Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information.
• - Able to gain acceptance for recommendations and influence/motivate/persuade the audience to comply with the recommendations/agreed course of action, including when there may be significant barriers.
• - Knowledge of and ability to work to policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety.

Desirable

• - In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare.
• - Understanding of the wider determinants of health, including social, economic and environmental factors and their impact on communities and health inequalities.

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).