Clinical Pharmacist

Job description

Job responsibilities

JOB PURPOSE

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 who will develop, manage, and mentor them.

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.

The post holder will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical prescriber.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

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.

Knowledge, skills, and experience

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council
• Minimum of 2 years experience as a pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio
• Has experience and an awareness of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice
• May hold or be working towards an independent prescribing qualification.
• Recognises priorities when problem-solving and identifies deviations from normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate
• Able to follow legal, ethical, professional, and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct
• Involves patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidelines.

Leadership

• Demonstrate understanding of the pharmacy role in governance and is able to implement this appropriately within the workplace.
• Demonstrate understanding of, and contributes to, the workplace vision
• Engage with Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) and involves PPGs in development of the role and practices
• Demonstrate ability to improve quality within limitations of service
• Review yearly progress and develops clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others.
• Demonstrate ability to motivate self to achieve goals
• Promote diversity and equality in people management techniques and leads by example.

For more information, please see the supporting documents.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Please provide details of your CPD, using examples where necessary.
• Please provide your registration number of your GPhC professional registration.

Experience

Essential

• Please provide detailed information of how you feel that your experience is suitable for this role; please provide examples to support your application referring to the job description and person specification for guidance.

Knowledge and skills

Essential

• Please provide detailed information of how you feel that your knowledge and skills are suitable for this role; please provide examples to support your application referring to the job description and person specification for guidance.

Personal Qualities

Essential

• Please provide details for why you would be a great fit for this role and why you have decided to apply.

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).

Employer details

Employer name

Primary Integrated Community Services

Address

Mansfield North Primary Care Network

Nottingham

NG19 8BL

Employer's website

http://picsnhs.org.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)