Deputy Lead Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

The successful candidate will have excellent clinical, leadership, management and communication skills. You will be a strong team player and will develop, manage and mentor a pharmacy team, together with our existing lead pharmacist over the coming years. You will be an independent prescriber, independently managing patients with long term conditions and/or minor illness within your competence and scope of practice. You will enjoy clinical, patient-facing work as well as helping develop new pharmacist-led pathways for chronic disease management, medicines optimisation and medicine safety processes.

Key responsibilities

The role will be varied and include:

Working closely with and to deputise for the Clinical Lead Pharmacist

Working alongside a wider team of clinicians in the practice, with a multi-disciplinary approach

Developing practice prescribing and chronic disease protocols and training practice staff alongside the Clinical Lead Pharmacist

Contribute to and lead on the recruitment, induction, development and appraisal of pharmacy technicians and junior pharmacists and ensure that adequate training and supervision are provided, alongside the lead clinical pharmacist

Help provide mentorship and leadership to the clinical pharmacy team, supporting with 1:1s and appraisals where needed.

Provide pharmaceutical input to areas of chronic disease management within the practices and develop pharmacist-led patient care pathways

Independently undertake chronic disease reviews (including diabetes, hypertension, COPD and asthma) and/or minor illnesses within your independent prescribing competence with scope to develop specialist areas.

Undertake structured medication reviews to manage patients with complex polypharmacy , especially older people, housebound patients, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities

Improve prescribing practice through educational support for all prescribers in the practices

Provide support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries

Provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation, safe prescribing and quality improvement, identifying national and local prescribing guidance that affects patient safety requiring implementation (including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and new research evidence)

Support improvements in clinical care through practice based audits and implementing change

Manage the pharmacy technician team together with the clinical, prescribing and reception leads in each practice

Contribute to the vision and development of pharmacy services within the PCN

Support public health campaigns such as vaccination

Key Working Relationships

Patients

Pharmacy team clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians

PCN leads: Clinical Director, Lead Clinical Pharmacist, Clinical Lead GPs and Lead Practice Managers

GP prescribing leads at each practice, GP clinical supervisor, all GPs

Reception/repeat prescribing teams

Practice nurses and health care assistants

Community pharmacists

CCG pharmacists and peer support groups

Hospital pharmacists

Community nurses and other community health professionals

Patient Participation Groups

Personal

Essential

• Able to work autonomously or as part of a team
• Clear written and verbal communication skills
• Self-motivated and able to motivate other members of the team
• Flexibility required to work with different teams in different practices
• Excellent organisation and management skills and ability to prioritise
• Strongly held values around equality, diversity and openness
• Resilience, resourcefulness and an ability to cope under pressure
• Leadership skills: able to lead and mentor a team, work independently, provide support to other pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, contribute to the PCN vision for quality improvement and develop clear plans to achieve results
• Collaborative working: ability to work collaboratively in multi-disciplinary teams and develop strong working relationships with staff in different practices, community and hospital pharmacy teams and CCG pharmacists
• Safe working: recognition of personal limitations and when to refer/ask advice from colleagues, understanding of clinical governance, ability to identify and resolve risk management issues, develop and review policies relating to safe prescribing
• Education, training and development: proven commitment to continuing professional development and education, ability to develop and deliver education for other staff and mentor and appraise more junior pharmacist colleagues
• Excellent keyboard and computer skills including working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

Desirable

• Knowledge of EMIS clinical system

Qualifications

Essential

• In date and current GPhC registration
• Independent Prescriber qualification
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of clinical pharmacy, prescribing and medicines management
• Previous experience of working within the leadership team, or exposure to line management functions.

Desirable

• Knowledge of service development and contributing new initiatives and knowledge to develop processes.
• Post-graduate Diploma in General Pharmacy Practice
• Special interest in diabetes and/or hypertension/COPD/asthma
• High level of accuracy when entering information and/or data
• Able to document clinical information accurately, using nationally approved coding

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 4-5 years post-graduate

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).