PCN Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

Key duties and responsibilities

Patient-facing long-term condition clinics

-See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicines optimisation is required (e.g. Respiratory, Cardiovascular and Diabetes).

-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.

-Make appropriate recommendations to Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.

Structured medication reviews

-Undertake holistic structured medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring. These will be focused on target groups such as frail patients, care home residents, and those having issues with polypharmacy.

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.

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 high-risk patient groups.

Patient facing medicines support

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

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital

-To ensure practices are safely and effectively reconciling 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).

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

-Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other network 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.

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

-Work with the senior pharmacists to produce and implement a repeat prescribing policy within each PCN practice.

-Ensure the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process within practices is safe and effective, where staff are reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review.

-Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.

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 relevant 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 formulary list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors or subject to shared care.

-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 teams to ensure the practices are 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.

Collaborative working arrangements

-Participates in PCN MDTs.

-Liaises with colleagues including CCG/STP/ICS Pharmacists/Pharmacy Technicians and Heads of Medicines Management/Optimisation to benefit from peer support.

-Foster and maintain strong links with all services across the PCN and neighbouring networks.

-Explores the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships.

-Liaises with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients, including but not limited to:

Patients and their representatives

GP, nurses and other practice staff

Social prescribers, first contact physiotherapists, physicians associates and paramedics.

Community pharmacists and support staff

Other members of the medicines management team including pharmacists & pharmacy technicians

Locality / GP prescribing lead

Locality managers

Community nurses and other allied health professionals

Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation

Professional development

-Work with your line manager to undertake continual personal and professional development, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the role and responsibilities.

-Adhere to organisational policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety.

-Work with your line manager to access regular clinical supervision, to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present.

-Review yearly progress and develop clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others.

-Participate in the delivery of formal education programmes.

-Demonstrate an understanding of current educational policies relevant to working areas of practice and keep up to date with relevant clinical practice.

Research and Evaluation

-Critically evaluate and review literature.

-Identify where there is a gap in the evidence base to support practice.

-Generate evidence suitable for presentations at practice and local level.

-Apply research evidence base into the workplace.

Miscellaneous

-Work as part of the team to seek feedback, continually improve the service and contribute to business planning.

-Undertake any tasks consistent with the level of the post and the scope of the role, ensuring that work is delivered in a timely and effective manner.

-Duties may vary from time to time, without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility.

Qualifications

Essential

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council

Desirable

• May hold or be working towards an independent prescribing qualification
• Clinical Diploma

Experience

Essential

• Experience and an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-terms conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice
• Demonstrates ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams community groups
• Experience of partnership/collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations

Desirable

• Minimum of two years experience as a pharmacist
• Previous experience working in GP practice

Qualities and attributes

Essential

• Commitment to reducing health inequalities and proactively working to reach people from all communities
• Demonstrates use of appropriate communication to gain the cooperation of relevant stakeholders (including patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other NHS/private organisations, e.g. CCGs)
• Is able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary
• Ability to identify risk and assess/manage risk when working with individuals
• Able to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• Able to provide leadership and to finish work tasks
• Ability to maintain effective working relationships and to promote collaborative practice with all colleagues
• Demonstrates personal accountability, emotional resilience and works well under pressure
• Ability to organise, plan and prioritise on own initiative, including when under pressure and meeting deadlines
• High level of written and oral communication skills
• Ability to work flexibly and enthusiastically within a team or on own initiative
• Knowledge of and ability to work to policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety
• Demonstrates and understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards of practice
• Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures relating to performance management

Desirable

• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision

Skills and knowledge

Essential

• Understanding of the wider determinants of health, including social, economic and environmental factors and their impact on communities
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing
• 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 where there may be significant barriers
• Able to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol
• Understand the principles of research governance

Desirable

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare
• Able to plan, manage, monitor and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions

Other

Essential

• Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including to visit people in their own homes

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).