Practice Based Clinical Pharmacist

Job description

Job responsibilities

The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, working 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 clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services, in partnership with the management team.

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.

Primary Duties and Areas of Responsibility

Patient facing long term conditions- See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required.

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 GPs for medicine improvement.

Patient facing clinical medication review-Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.

Patient facing care home medication reviews- Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring

Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

Patient facingdomiciliary clinical medication review- Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.

Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients -Answer medicinerelated 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 test results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc. Where appropriate, support the clinical and admin teams with:

1. Repeat prescribing policy and process: Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging those needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.

2. Risk stratification: Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches.

3. 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).

4. Information management: Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.

5. Medicines quality improvement: Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

6. Medicines safety: Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.

7. 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 practice in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practice computer system. Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

8. Education and training: Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.

9. Care Quality Commission: Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

10. Public health: To support public health campaigns. To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.

Collaborative Working Relationships

Recognises the roles of other colleagues within the organisation and their role to patient care

Demonstrates use of appropriate communication to gain the co-operation of relevant stakeholders (including patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other NHS/private organisations e.g. PCN)

Demonstrates ability to lead a team

Is able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary

Actively work toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the practice and locality

Foster and maintain strong links with all services across locality

Explores the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships

Demonstrates ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams

Liaises with ICB colleagues including ICB Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit

Liaises with ICB pharmacists and Heads of Medicines Management/ Optimisation to benefit from peer support

Liaises with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to Patients GP, nurses and other practice staff, other healthcare professionals including ICB and other PCN pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social care teams and dieticians, Locality/GP prescribing lead, Locality managers, community nurses and other allied health professionals, community and hospital pharmacy teams, hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required
• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Has experience and an awareness of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in a general practice.
• Minimum of 2 years experience as a pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• Holds 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.

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

Great Oakley Medical Centre

Address

1 Barth Close

Great Oakley

Corby

Northamptonshire

NN18 8LU

Employer's website

https://www.greatoakleymedicalcentre.co.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)