Clinical Pharmacist - Primary Care Network

Job description

Job responsibilities

The post holder will work within their clinical competence as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide expertise in clinical medicines management. This involves providing face to face structured medication reviews, managing long term conditions, ensuring safe prescribing at the transfer of care, implementing systems for safer prescribing, repeat prescription reauthorisation and dealing with acute prescription requests.

The post holder will perform face to face medication review of patients with polypharmacy, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple comorbidities.

The post holder will provide leadership on quality improvement and clinical audit, and manage some aspects of the Quality and Outcomes Framework.

This role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies so requires motivation and passion to deliver an excellent service within general practice.

The post holder will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical prescriber, if that qualification is not already held.

Patient Facing Long-Term Conditions 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 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 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.

Medicine Information to Practice Staff and Patients

• Answers 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 highrisk 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 highrisk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).

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).

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.
• 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.

Operating arrangements:

• Responsibility for one or more sites dependent upon patient list size.
• Based across one or more sites with the opportunity to work remotely from other sites.
• This is an evolving role and the responsibilities may augment over time in consultation with the post-holder.
• From time to time the post-holder may be required to work from other sites.

Other Tasks

• Duties may be varied from time to time under the direction of the line manager dependent on current and evolving practice workload and staffing levels.

Other administration and professional responsibilities:

• Participate in the administrative and professional responsibilities of the practice team.
• Ensure appropriate items of service claims are made accurately, reporting any problems to the practice administrator.
• Ensure collection and maintenance of any required statistical information.
• Attend and participate in practice meetings as required.

Training and personal development:

• Maintain professional registration with the GPhC.
• If it is necessary to expand the role to include additional responsibilities, full training will be given.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Registration as a Pharmacist with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Evidence of CPD.
• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (or equivalent).
• Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent prescribing qualification.

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• A member of or working towards Faculty Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 2 years post-qualification experience.
• An appreciation of the nature of Lakeside Healthcare as an organisation within the PCN framework.
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing, and strategies for improving prescribing.

Desirable

• Experience of working across multiple sectors of Pharmacy (Community Pharmacy, Hospital Pharmacy, CCGs, Industry).
• Experience of working in general practice.
• Experience of using SystmOne.

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

Lakeside Healthcare Group

Address

Doctors Surgery

14 Huntingdon Street

St. Neots

Cambridgeshire

PE19 1BQ

Employer's website

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