Clinical Pharmacist - Dryland Surgery (Maternity Leave cover)

Job responsibilities

1. Patient Facing Medicines Support

Hold clinics for patients requiring face-to-face structured medication reviews. Provide telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

2. Patient Facing Medication Review

Undertake structured, face to face clinical medication reviews with patients with multi-morbidity and polypharmacy, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities, and implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests.

3. Risk Stratification

Design, develop and implement methods of computer search to identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines. Manage risk stratification tools on behalf of the practice. Work with patients and the primary care team to minimise risk through medicines optimisation.

4. Patient Facing Long-term Condition Clinics

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

Manage own case load, and oversee the case loads of team members, and run long-term condition clinics, independently prescribing for conditions where medicines have a large component.

Review the on-going need for each medicine, the monitoring needs and support patients with their medicines taking, ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation).

5. Unplanned Hospital Admissions

Devise and implement searches to identify cohorts of patients most likely to be at risk of an unplanned hospital admission and readmission from medicines.

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

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

6. Repeat Prescribing

Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates. Make necessary changes as an independent prescriber, and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.

7. Telephone Triage

Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate clinician and/or other service provision, for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time, e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term conditions, social factors.

8. Medicines Safety & Quality Improvement

Identify and provide leadership on areas of prescribing and medicines optimisation.

Conduct clinical audits and improvement projects, involving and collaborating with colleagues. Present results and provide leadership on suggested change.

Identify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use of medicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence from clinical trials.

Manage the process of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners.

Demonstrate continuous QI activity focused upon prescribing safety as specified in the QOF guidance. This work might include the PINCER tool, for example.

9. Care Home Medication Reviews

Manage own caseload (and that of the team) of care home residents. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multi-morbidity and polypharmacy and implement prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests.

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

10. Domiciliary Clinical Medication Review

Manage own and team 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.

11. 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 manage these changes without referral to a GP.

Perform a clinical medication review, produce a post discharge medicines care plan including dose titration and booking of follow-up tests and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge 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).

Work in partnership with local hospital 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.

12. Management of Common/Minor/Self-Limiting Ailments

Manage a caseload for patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signpost to community pharmacy and refer to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

13. Differential/Undifferential Diagnosis

Manage own and team caseload for patients and diagnose people with long term and/or acute/common conditions/ailments. Refer to a GP or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

Signpost to other services and/or healthcare professionals where appropriate.

14. Medicine Information to Practice Staff and Patients

Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff and patients with queries about medicines. Suggest and recommend solutions. Provide follow-up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.

15. Information Management

Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.

16. Provide Information, Education, Guidance and Training

Provide information, education, guidance and training to colleagues and other practice staff on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.

17. Care Quality Commission

Provide leadership to the general practice footprint to ensure they are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved. Undertake risk assessment and management and ensure compliance with medicines legislation.

18. Population and Public Health

Contribute to and support public health campaigns. Provide specialist knowledge on public health programmes (e.g. immunisation).

19. Cost Saving Programmes

Assist the ICB Pharmacy Team where appropriate, by making recommendations for changes to medicines designed to save on medicine costs where a medicine or product with lower acquisition cost is now available.

20. Service Development

Develop and manage new services that are built around new medicines or NICE guidance, where new medicine/recommendations allow the development of a new care pathway (e.g. new oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation).

21. Implementation of Local and National Guidelines and Formulary Recommendations

Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).

Liaise directly with hospital colleagues where prescribing needs to be returned to specialists. Assist in setting and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer systems.

Suggest and develop computer decision support tools to help remind prescribers about formulary choice and local recommendations.

Audit the practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Provide newsletters on important prescribing messages to improve prescribers knowledge and work with the team to develop and implement other techniques known to influence implementation of evidence such as audit and feedback.

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 5 years post graduate experience in pharmacy (width and depth), as demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare.
• An understanding of the nature of GPs and general practices.
• Has an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in a general practice.
• An understanding of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing.
• Experience of obtaining, analysing and communicating routine and complex, technical and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g. patients, colleagues).
• Experience of developing and implementing common systems and processes across teams and across service boundaries.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate with and gain the co-operation of a wide variety of stakeholders (e.g. patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, including those from different disciplines and external organisations/sectors).
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills.
• Good IT skills, including the ability to use Microsoft Office applications and digital and web-based database systems.
• Knowledge of and ability to work to legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies and procedures and codes of conduct, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety.

Personal Qualities, Abilities and Attributes

Essential

• Ability to plan, manage, monitor, advise, deliver and review general pharmaceutical care programmes for patients and medicine optimisation issues in core areas including disease states/long-term conditions.
• Ability to recognise priorities when problem solving and identify deviations from the normal pattern and refer to GPs, other senior staff where appropriate.
• Ability to plan and manage multiple workload priorities, work under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Ability to manage, monitor, support and train staff.
• Ability to gain acceptance for recommendations and influence/motivate/persuade the audience to comply when there may be significant barriers.
• Ability to involve patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and support adherence as per NICE guidelines.
• Ability to work effectively and flexibly within a team, leading a team and on own initiative.
• Able to demonstrate accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.
• Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions.
• Willingness to work flexible hours when required to meet work demands.
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including visiting people in their own homes.

Desirable

• Have an understanding of the implications of working within a newly developing service and the impact of service changes on internal and external staff, and on patients.

Qualifications

Essential

• Mandatory registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Masters Degree in Pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent.
• Independent Prescriber, or currently working towards an independent prescribing qualification.
• Immunisation Status.

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Membership of the Primary Care Pharmacy Association (PCPA).
• Member, or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Medicine Management Qualification.
• Minor Ailments Certificate.
• Specialist knowledge gained through post-graduate diploma or equivalent training/experience.
• Information Governance Toolkit completion.
• Basic Life Support Training.

Other

Essential

• Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions.
• Willingness to work flexible hours when required to meet work demands.
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including visiting people in their own homes.

Desirable

• Have an understanding of the implications of working within a newly developing service and the impact of service changes on internal and external staff, and on patients.

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).