PCN Advanced Practitioner Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

The main responsibilities of the Advanced Practitioner Pharmacist role are:

To support the Duty teams, including same day triage, working as part of the practice Duty teams and as appropriate, provide definitive treatment (including prescribing medications following policy, patient group directives, NICE (national) and local clinical guidelines and local care pathways) or make necessary referrals to other members of the primary care team

To manage undifferentiated, undiagnosed conditions and identify red flags and underlying serious pathology and take appropriate action

To use complex decision making to inform the diagnosis, investigation and complete management of episodes of care within a broad scope of practice

To actively take a personalised care approach and population centred care approach to enable shared decision making with the presenting person

To lead and be the line manager of the Medicines Management Team within the PCN (made up of Clinical Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians). This is equivalent to duties on one day per week.

To be the main contact/liaison point over medicines management matters with local community pharmacies and nursing homes within the PCN area

To complete the relevant training in order to provide multi-professional clinical practice and CPD supervision to other roles within primary care, for example first contact practitioners and the personalised care roles.

As a Clinical Pharmacist, the postholder will also be required to:

Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using their expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas to provide expertise in clinical medicines review and assist the wider Medicines Management Team to:

Reduce inappropriate polypharmacy and wasteful prescribing through clinical medication review

Reconcile medicines following hospital discharge and work with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge.

Contribute to reductions in medicine related hospital admissions and readmissions by supporting patients to get the best outcomes from their medicines and identifying and addressing medicines related issues

Interface with community and hospital pharmacy colleagues and develop referral processes between primary care professionals including the promotion of the repeat dispensing service

Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing requests for repeat prescriptions and medicines reaching review dates

Manage patients and health care professionals medicine queries

Increase quality and safety of prescribing through mechanisms such as audit and PDSA cycles

Manage practice formularies to improve the quality, safety and cost effectiveness of prescribing

Implement drug withdrawals and alerts e.g. MHRA aimed at improving medicines safety

Work with primary care professional and patients to implement NICE and other evidence based guidelines

Run clinics where medicines are the main interventions e.g. anticoagulant monitoring clinics.

Contribute to multi-morbidity reviews and multidisciplinary reviews

Provide medicines information and training to Practice healthcare professionals and admin staff

Review daily Pathology results for patients on known medicines

Act as a source of medicines information for all of the practice team and patients (e.g. around doses, side effects, adverse events, possible alternatives e.g. around out of stocks)

Undertake minor ailments triage: dealing with minor ailments and triaging patients appropriately

Qualifications

Essential

• Qualified as an Independent Prescribing Pharmacist and registered as such with the General Pharmaceutical Council
• Completion of CPPE Primary Care Pharmacy Education Pathway (PCPEP)
• Masters degree (MPharm) Level Education

Personal Qualities

Essential

• Confident and supportive team leader
• Polite
• Flexible and co-operative
• Motivated
• Forward thinker
• High levels of integrity and loyalty
• Sensitive and empathetic in distressing situations
• Ability to work calmly under pressure

Experience

Essential

• Extensive experience of working with the general public and primary care
• Experience of leading/line managing a high performing pharmacy team
• Experience of delivering supportive same day/triage services to patients
• Extensive experience of administrative duties
• Experience of working in a primary healthcare setting

Other requirements

Essential

• Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) check
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the PCN practices on a regular basis and work within the surgery sites that comprise the PCN
• (This is not envisaged to be a remote role)

Desirable

• Flexibility to work outside of core office hours

Skills

Essential

• Excellent communication skills (written and oral)
• Strong IT skills including competency in the use of Office and Outlook
• Clear, polite telephone manner
• Strong history taking and consultation skills
• Strong organisational skills, including planning, prioritising, time management and record keeping
• Ability to work as a team member and autonomously
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Good problem solving & analytical skills
• Ability to develop policy and procedure and support others to follow

Desirable

• EMIS user skills
• Understanding of clinical coding

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).