Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Clinical Pharmacist, Mental Health - B6, progression opportunity to B7

The closing date is 10 June 2025

Job summary

We are looking for a pharmacist to join our specialist mental health pharmacy team as a mental health clinical pharmacist. Early career pharmacists who are yet to achieve a postgraduate diploma (or equivalent experience) will be considered for this post on a band development basis.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required:

- Registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).

- Evidence of continuing professional development to comply with GPhC requirements.

- Experience working in mental health pharmacy is helpful but not essential to the role as full training will be provided.

- Able to work alone and unsupervised.

- Able to organise and prioritise own workload.

- Effective oral and written communication with colleagues, staff and patients.

- Ability to write reports and make and deliver presentations to a range of colleagues in various settings.

- Intermediate competence in standard range of IT programs.

- Concentration and accuracy required for clinical validation and accuracy checking prescriptions and performing calculations.

- Manipulation of materials for the accurate dispensing of prescriptions including preparing aids and demonstrating devices to help patients manage their medicines.

- This post will require travel to wards and units across Gloucestershire.

Additional contact: If you would like to arrange a visit or a chat please phone 0300 422 6289 and speak to any of the team.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will support patients and their families by providing advice about the actions and use of medication, optimising treatment, providing information and liaising with acute and other care providers to ensure seamless transfer of care.

- They will be a clinical specialist in this area and where appropriate, an independent prescribing role may be undertaken.

- To contribute to good physical health wellbeing of patients by providing expert advice and performing interventions to improve physical health.

- To deliver a comprehensive clinical pharmacy and medicines management service to patients under the care of GHC and to the multidisciplinary teams responsible for their care.

- To support pharmacy staff to deliver an effective dispensing and supply service.

- To promote safe, rational, efficacious and cost-effective use of medicines.

- Undertake (with training, support and supervision from the GSQIA) patient-focused improvement projects.

- This post has an emergency duty commitment (on call) covering the acute trust Gloucestershire Hospitals NHSFT Pharmacy.

- This post has a commitment for weekend and bank holiday working on a rota basis.

- Candidates who are yet to achieve a postgraduate diploma (or equivalent experience) will be considered for this post. A development plan would be agreed to gain this qualification. Banding will be reflective of level of qualification/experience.

Mon-Fri 8:30-4:30 (plus weekend working and EDC as per rota)

About us

We take pride in placing people at the centre of everything we do, working together as a united team. Driven by a shared ambition to continually grow, develop, and learn, we recognise and value every contribution. By combining our experience and skills, we not only support our vibrant, diverse communities, but also support one another.With a team of over 9,000 employees, we are proud to be the largest employer in Gloucestershire and rank among the top 10 largest Trusts in the South West region. By joining our Trust, you will benefit from an excellent package that includes exclusive benefits, flexible working opportunities and the chance to gain valuable experience in one of our innovative hospitals. As well as generous annual leave allowance, access to the excellent NHS pension scheme, competitive bank rates, discounts at local shops and restaurants, access to two on-site nurseries, discounted public transport, reward and recognition and a range of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

The GHNHSFT pharmacy department provides the pharmacy services to the local mental health trust (GHC) under a service level agreement. This post is based within the specialist mental health pharmacy team (approx 20 staff) which is part of the wider pharmacy department.

Date posted

28 May 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 6

Salary

£37,338 to £44,962 a year (pa pro rata if part-time)

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

318-25-T0389

Job locations

Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

Gloucestershire

GL1 3NN

Job description

Job responsibilities

Clinical Pharmacy Services to Inpatient Wards and Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs):

- Be responsible and accountable for providing a clinical pharmacy service to inpatient wards and community teams:

- Ensure that designated ward and team bases are visited by a pharmacist at agreed intervals.

- Regularly attend and contribute to multidisciplinary team meetings

- Proactively review, rationalise and optimise patients medications.

- Review all prescriptions regularly, ensuring adherence to legislation, national and local guidelines and formularies.

- Advise on individual drug treatments, including possible adverse effects and interactions.

- Undertake medicines reconciliation assurance in conjunction with the medicines management technicians.

- Deal with and report medication incidents

- Work to improve patients concordance with medication.

- Provide information to staff, patients and their representatives, including individual counselling on newly prescribed medicines and discharge counselling.

- Produce comprehensive patient medication histories as needed.

- Maintain appropriate clinical documentation and records, including intervention/contribution monitoring and outcome data.

- Advise prescribers and other healthcare professionals on clinical pharmacy issues, answer queries and solve complex problems.

- Work across traditional boundaries as part of a fully integrated multidisciplinary team.

- Provide advice to clinicians on unlicensed medicines use and areas of practice where the evidence base is lacking and medical opinion may differ.

- Responsibility for periodically checking controlled drug stocks on wards and outside units as per trustwide audit criteria.

Dispensary Duties:

- The post includes a commitment as per the team rota provide cover to the mental health dispensary.

- Clinically check prescriptions, ensuring adherence to legislation and formularies.

- Dispense and accuracy check prescriptions.

- Supervise pharmacy staff including pharmacists and technicians as needed.

- Compile discharge medication summaries.

- Ensure supplies are sent to wards and units in a timely manner.

- Access and interpret patients test results from pathology systems and other sources including the clozapine patient monitoring systems.

- Co-ordinate responses to email and telephone enquiries.Education and Training

- Contribute to the delivery of educational sessions provided by the mental health pharmacy team.

- Proactively support the learning of others about mental health pharmacy within the pharmacy team and MDT.

- Support the development of training materials in line with local and national objectives, with supervision.

- Identify own development needs, aligning these to service requirements and personal aspirations. Proactively develop and improve own practice.

- Undertake all mandatory training.

Non-Medical Prescribing:

- To undertake a post graduate qualification in non-medical prescribing.

- Prescribe medicines as an NMP in line with current legislation, local policies and within own level of expertise and competence.

Communication and working relationships:

- Identify and respond to the specialist medication information needs of patients, carers, doctors, nurses, and other members of the healthcare team.

- Ensure information, which may be highly complex, is provided in a timely manner, in an appropriate format for the individual or group.

- Able to present information in a suitable format (e.g., written and/or verbal) and style for the target audience. Barriers to effective communication may include learning disability, language difficulties, cognitive impairment and non-consenting/non-compliant patients.

- Communication with other members of the pharmacy team.

Leadership:

- Act as a positive role model to all colleagues, and motivate and inspire others.

- Demonstrate innovation and a commitment to developing the services delivered.

- Deputise for others where delegated/instructed.

Safe Systems of Work:

- Accountable for own professional actions and activities, guided by legislation, national and local policies, procedures and protocols.

- Implement and/or follow agreed governance initiatives such as incident/error reporting.

- Responsible for ensuring a safe working practice and environment through legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work Act and COSHH regulations, along with local policies and procedures including manual handling.

Improving quality and developing practice:

- Comply with requirements to register with the GPhC and ensuring own professional development is maintained by keeping up to date with practice developments.

- An annual appraisal (development conversation) is implemented for all staff with their line manager.

- Develop and maintain clinical skills and knowledge necessary to deliver and evidence-based service.

- Attend and contribute to pharmacy team meetings, this may involve clinical presentations and case studies.

- With supervision and assistance take on increased responsibility recognising own limitations and seeking help appropriately.

- Understand and contribute to the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, protocols and guidelines relevant to the specialist area.

- Openly question and challenge practice in a constructive way so that standards of patient care are continually evaluated and improved.

- Promote a research culture within the pharmacy department e.g., by participating in publishing articles, projects and audits.

- Participate in local projects and audits and the Trust wide medicines audit programme.

Weekend Working and On-Call:

- The post holder will be part of the weekend working rota covering the acute trust pharmacy at a frequency of approximately 1 in 13.

- The post holder will be part of the bank holiday working rota covering the acute trust as per departmental arrangements.

- The post holder will be part of the on-call rota covering the acute trust pharmacy at a frequency of approximately 1 in 12 (full training provided). This entails:

- Being the first point of contact for the department out of hours in the event of a major incident, and for information, advice and supply of any items required.

- Being able to evaluate the appropriateness of requests made and to be able to prioritise the response to that request.

- Opening up the pharmacy department at unsociable hours to provide medication that is needed urgently.

- Being able to clearly elicit information and communicate responses to all grades of staff including consultants and senior managers.

- Being able to refer to other specialist pharmacy colleagues if the post-holder requires assistance.

Other:

- Have awareness of mentally ill, sick and dying patients and have exposure to distressing or emotional situations due to the patient cohort.

- Deal with medicines information queries from patients, medical and other healthcare professionals, using a wide range of information sources both electronic and hard copy regarding drug-related queries.

- Occasional handling of potentially hazardous substances (e.g., cytotoxic medication) in accordance with standard operating procedures and COSHH regulations.

- Physical effort for lifting and moving light packages between locations.

- Requirement for frequent long periods of concentration when validating or checking prescriptions / calculations, dealing with interruptions for advice/requests as per service demand.

- Be competent in the use of all relevant Trust IT systems including the use of electronic patient record, email, Microsoft Office and pathology systems.

- Undertake all mandatory training.

- Contribute to and champion departmental sustainability initiatives.

- Undertake any other duties as deemed fit by the GHFT pharmacy management.

Contact Details

Rachel Jackson (Clinical Mental Health Pharmacy Manager)

Rachel.jackson@ghc.nhs.uk

0300 422 6289

If you would like to arrange a visit or a chat before applying please get in touch.