Job responsibilities
The post holder is a Pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of Pharmacists in General Practice. In this role they will be supported by a Senior Clinical Pharmacist and Neighbourhood lead pharmacist who will develop, manage, and mentor them. Additionally, the post holder will contribute to the design and delivery of teaching and learning activities at the University of Nottingham. School of Pharmacy.
The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role. The post holder will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy.
The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescriptions system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicines reconciliation on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, providing expertise in clinical medicines advice while addressing both public and social care needs of patient in the GP practice(s).
The post holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.
The post holder will ensure that the practice integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare, and help manage workload. The role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies so requires motivation and passion to deliver excellent service within general practice.
At the University, the post holder will support the delivery of clinical and professional teaching, supporting student development and delivery of assessment across all year groups. The post holder will act as an ambassador for the PCN Pharmacist role and role model for students.
The post holder will act as a liaison between the PCN and the University to support experiential learning provision and wider curriculum input.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Neighbourhood team working and Management of neighbourhood technicians
To manage and support the neighbourhood PCN technicians in their development and completion of the CPPE primary care education pathway and delivery of key PCN workstreams, including IIF targets.
Face to face support for the technician within the neighbourhood and close working with other PCN pharmacists within the neighbourhood and wider PCN.
Patient facing long-term condition clinics
See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g., COPD, asthma). 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 (i.e., medicines optimisation). Make appropriate recommendations to Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.
Patient facing clinical medication review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for Senior Clinical Pharmacist, Nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
Patient facing care home medication review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the Senior Clinical Pharmacist, nurses or GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
Patient facing domiciliary clinical medication review
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the Senior Clinical Pharmacists, Nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.
Management of common/minor/self-limiting aliments
Managing caseload for patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
Patient facing medicines support
Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries, and concerns about their medicines in the practice.
Telephone medicines support
Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries, and concerns about their medicines.
Medicine information to practice staff and patients
Answers all medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice 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.
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.
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 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).
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
Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy. Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.
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.
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 simple audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the 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 health economys RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs). Assist practices in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system. 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 team to ensure the practice is 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.
For more information please see the supporting documents
