Clinical Pharmacist

Job 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 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 review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for 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 nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring.

Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments

Managing caseload of 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

Answer relevant 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

Review and update the 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.

Support the development or review of procedures to ensure patients have appropriate monitoring in place

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 clinical 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.

Support the practice to ensure there is an effective procedure in place to implement actions identified in MHRA alerts.

Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economies 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.

Education and Training

Provide education and training to the 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.

Full Job Description attached - See supporting documentation

Qualifications

Essential

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and
• registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council
• Minimum of 2 years experience as a pharmacist, demonstrated within their practice portfolio.
• Good standard of education with excellent literacy and numeracy skills
• Experience of working with the general public
• Experience of working in a healthcare setting
• Excellent communication skills (written, oral and presenting)
• Strong IT skills (generic)
• Ability to prioritise, delegate and work to tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• Effective time management (planning and organising)
• Ability to network and build relationships
• Ability to implement and embed policy and procedure
• Ability to motivate and train staff
• Polite and confident
• Flexible and cooperative
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Motivated and proactive
• Ability to use initiative and judgement
• Forward thinker with a solution focused approach
• High levels of integrity and loyalty
• Sensitive and empathetic in distressing situations
• Ability to work under pressure
• Confident, assertive and resilient
• Ability to drive and deliver change effectively
• Ability to motivate teams, enhance morale and maintain a positive working environment, including team building sessions
• Flexibility to work outside core office hours
• Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) check
• Always maintain confidentiality
• Full UK driving licence

Desirable

• Educated to A-level/equivalent or higher with relevant experience
• Leadership and/or management qualification
• Experience of managing multidisciplinary teams
• Experience of performance management, including appraisal writing, staff development and disciplinary procedures
• Experience of successfully developing and implementing projects
• NHS/ Primary Care general practice experience
• Relevant health and safety experience
• Ability to recognise opportunities to enhance service delivery
• Excellent leadership skills
• Strategic thinker and negotiator
• EMIS/SystmOne/Vision user skills
• Proven problem solving and analytical skills

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).