Specialist Pharmacist

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

The closing date is 24 March 2025

Job summary

If you are looking for a new challenge and have a desire to make a difference to the care of Cancer patients to ensure they get the best and most appropriate care, we would love to hear from you.

We are looking for an enthusiastic pharmacist to join our cancer services team working in both clinical and technical aspects of the service and within clinical trials. We are looking for a motivated pharmacist who wants to build their skills and knowledge in the area of cancer services.

We are committed to expanding the role of pharmacists in cancer services to advanced pharmacy practitioners and advanced clinical practitioners,joining our team of pharmacists who work closely with the directorate team to drive forward the care of cancer patients.

You will be an integral part of the chemotherapy and aseptic services team and as a member of our team will be expected to work with senior colleagues and contribute to service development within the field of cancer and aseptic services.

You should possess excellent communication skills and be able to demonstrate ability to work as a member of a multi-disciplinary team. You must have initiative, be forward thinking and be self-motivated.

Both the Trust and the department embrace innovation and will encourage audit and service development.

We are committed to achieving a balance between high quality service delivery and professional development. We can offer you a supportive and training-focused environment within a friendly team.

Main duties of the job

Working as a specialist practitioner delivering a comprehensive clinical pharmacy service to oncology and haematology patients ensuring that chemotherapy regimens prescribed are safe and appropriate for administration to individual patients given their diagnosis and health status, are in line with standard protocols or approved clinical trials, and are prepared accurately and safely in a timely manner.

Be responsible for delivering specialist clinical pharmacy and medicines management services to oncology and haematology wards, including developing treatments plans to optomise patient care and providing advice to medical and nursing staff.

Being an active member of the cancer services pharmacy team with focus on the delivery of pharmaceutical care to oncology, haematology and palliative care patients on the ward, day unit and outpatients.

Undertaking teaching and supervision of less experienced pharmacists, technicians, and students providing cancer services.

Contributing to the implementation of protocol guidelines, specifying drug doses and clinical details required for the safe administration of chemotherapy drugs for all tumour sites.

Supporting to ensure that good manufacturing practice, medicines legislation and agreed protocol driven treatment regimes are adhered to for staff and patients by assisting the Lead Specialist Pharmacist in the quality management and validation systems in the unit and the implementation of audit action points.

About us

Our purpose is simple - Putting Patients First. We are looking for exceptional colleagues who can help us achieve this.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is a large acute and specialised hospital trust that provides a range of local acute services to the residents of Worcestershire and more specialised services to a larger population in Herefordshire and beyond.

The Trust operates hospital-based services from three sites in Kidderminster, Redditch and Worcester

Our workforce is nearly 6,800 strong, and our caring staff are recognised as providing good and outstanding patient-centred care. You could be one of them.

We are committed to recruiting the best people to work with us to achieve our Vision - working in partnership to provide the best healthcare for our communities, leading and supporting our teams to move 4ward. Our 4ward behaviours, which we ask all staff to demonstrate, underpin our everyday work and remain firmly at the heart of all we do.

Our objectives are simple:

Best services for local people
Best experience of care and best outcomes for our patients
Best use of resources
Best people

Better never stops, and our Clinical Services Strategy provides a clear future vision for our Trust, our hospitals, our services and our role in the wider health and care system.

We are proud to have achieved Timewise accreditation - this means we are committed to embedding flexible working within our organisation as a flex positive employer.

Date posted

03 March 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 7

Salary

£46,148 to £52,809 a year

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Full-time, Flexible working

Reference number

C9365-25-0156

Job locations

Charles Hastings Way

Worcester

Worcestershire

WR5 1DD

Job description

Job responsibilities

Provision of Cancer and Aseptic Services:

Under the management of the Lead Specialist Pharmacist (Aseptic Services), the post-holder will be responsible for:

Substantiating clinical pharmacy recommendations in cancer patients at the highest level and against challenge from prescribers.

Providing specialist clinical advice to other health care professionals on all pharmaceutical issues arising within the specialist area of cancer services. This will include the extrapolation of clinical and complex medicines information where data may be lacking and analysing, interpreting and comparing differing opinion or facts to determine the best prescribing strategy for an individual patient or patient group.

Providing a specialist aseptic pharmacy service to Haematology and Oncology patients and ensuring the chemotherapy regimens prescribed for patients by haematologists and oncologists are safe and appropriate for administration to individual patients.

Ensuring adherence to NHS England standard operating procedures in relation to drugs supply through the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF), NICE and other commissioning arrangements.

Management of specific supply pathways to include EAMS and compassionate use schemes.

Ensuring individual patients entered into clinical trials are treated according to the trial protocol.

Assisting with the creation of clinical guidelines relating to all areas of medicines use within cancer services.

Ensuring adherence to the Trust Formulary, unlicensed medicines policy and high cost drug procedures.

Helping to provide a cost effective and quality assured aseptic manufacturing service that is risk managed and meets the clinical and business strategies of the Trust.

Undertake pharmaceutical risk management for the aseptic services provided and ensure medicines legislation is complied with in those areas.

Updating and implementing quality management systems within the aseptic unit including change control, document control and product assessments.

Working towards implementation of action points raised from audits.

Assisting in undertaking and development of, the systems supporting the validation of all aspects of the aseptic services.

Helping to ensure on an on-going basis that all Pharmacy Aseptics SOPs comply with:- Current medicines legislation, national guidelines including the Guideline for Administration of Intrathecal Cytotoxic Medicines, professional and Trust standards for aseptic service delivery, current Good Manufacturing Practice Guidelines, COSHH, and health and safety legislation.

Contributing towards the pharmacy service development plan for trust cancer services.

Assisting in the delivery of key pharmacy modernisation initiatives within the area of cancer services and assisting in the assessment of the impact of such service development initiatives on medical and nursing staff within the post-holders area and the pharmacy department as a whole.

Provision of Specialist Clinical Services

Provide a specialist clinical pharmacy and medicines management service to patients and undertake pharmaceutical risk management for the Haematology/oncology beds.

Ensure compliance with medicines legislation, the Trust Medicines Policy, and medicines related national and local guidelines within Haematology/oncology beds.

Contribute to producing and implement appropriate technical and professional SOPs and associated policies to ensure that the Haematology/oncology medicines management systems are safe, robust, guided by national directives, standards, guidelines, and the post-holders own specialist knowledge, and are quality assured.

Evaluate prescribing practices and amend according to evidence-based practice, national/regional directives and clinical governance targets on a daily basis.

Substantiate pharmaceutical recommendations and advice to medical and nursing staff and communicate effectively any necessary actions to medical and nursing staff.

Construct pharmaceutical care plans for patients, assess and monitor clinical progress and outcome with regard to their medication and actively intervene to ensure that patients receive optimal care with minimal side effects.

Be responsible for the therapeutic blood monitoring of identified drugs within the post-holders clinical area.

Medication History Taking, Provision of Patient Information and Counselling

Ensure that information and patient counselling systems are implemented within their specialist area according to patient need to ensure that patients obtain the most benefit from their medicines.

Contribute to setting standards for, and manage the counseling of patients on their medicines to improve concordance and knowledge of their therapy.

Ensure all newly admitted patients are interviewed to construct an accurate medication history and assess compliance/concordance issues.

Review information against the admission details and prescription chart.

Pro-actively identify to medical staff any potential or actual medicines-related hospital admissions or associated issues and outline any required action to resolve identified discrepancies.

Assess patients discharge information requirements as early as possible in the admission stay to be able to prepare information on medicines for them based on individual need.

Counsel patients with complex needs such as a physical disability which may affect information requirements (sight or hearing), language difficulties, those with life-threatening or terminal diagnoses and highly distressed patients.

Provision of Specialist Information and Counselling:

The post-holder will ensure that specialist information regarding the preparation, prescribing and administration of medicines prepared by or supplied from the aseptic services is available to Trust staff and patients according to individual request or need. This will include advising medical, nursing and pharmacy staff on commissioning, evidence based medicines usage, safe handling and stability of chemotherapy and associated medicines

Managerial responsibilities

Provide day to day clinical supervision for pharmacists, pre-registration pharmacy graduates, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy assistants.

Provision of Education, Training and CPD

Assisting in the delivery of a training and continual competency assessment programme for pharmacy staff who are required to work within cancer services.

Identify personal training and development required to ensure the quality of the service. This may include undertaking a specialist post-graduate diploma or the Independent prescribing qualification.

Dispensary and other Operational Responsibilities

Providing the clinical pharmacist check on all prescriptions. This will require the scrutiny of prescriptions from medical and other practitioners to ensure they are accurate, appropriate for the patients needs, legal and cost-effective.

Questioning and challenging the prescriptions of all prescribers including Consultants whenever the post holder perceives it to be professionally appropriate and in the best interests of the patient.

Assist in the delivery of the pharmacy departments dispensing and other operational services as required to meet the needs of the service.

Participate in the Dispensary Saturday and Bank Holiday rotas and the departmental on-call rota.