Senior Clinical Pharmacist - Primary Care Network

Job description

Job responsibilities

JOB SUMMARY:

Supporting the overarching Lakeside Healthcare strategy and service delivery, the Senior PCN Clinical Pharmacist will have previous experience of working in primary care to develop and implement medicines management services in primary care.

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. The post holder will work collaboratively with a range of multidisciplinary teams to meet the needs of patients, support the delivery of policies and procedures, and provide pharmacy leadership across our Primary Care Networks (PCN).

The Senior PCN Clinical Pharmacist will perform structured medication reviews, oversee the repeat prescription authorisation process, manage acute prescription requests, conduct medicines reconciliation at transfer of care, and lead on the implementation of systems for safer prescribing within the PCN. The Senior PCN Clinical Pharmacist will also be expected to manage one or more areas of chronic disease.

In addition to the clinical responsibilities outlined above, the Senior PCN Clinical Pharmacist will be required to mentor and develop a pharmacy team of differing abilities to meet the strategic objectives for medicines management within Lakeside Healthcare.

To work at this level, the post holder will be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), be an independent prescriber, and ideally hold a postgraduate diploma in clinical pharmacy. The postholder will also have a minimum of 2 years of leadership and management experience within primary care and understand the challenges and opportunities of working in a super-practice and its associated Primary Care Networks.

In summary, the post holder is an experienced Clinical Pharmacist who understands the expectations of a medicines management team within general practice, is able to manage, mentor and develop pharmacists and technicians, acts within their professional boundaries, ensures that the PCN integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, is keen on implementing medicines safety initiatives, strives to improve patient access to healthcare, and is passionate about reducing the medicines related GP workload.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

Chronic Disease Management

• Independently manage or signpost patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma).

Medication Safety Reviews

• Undertake medication safety reviews of medical notes to ensure repeat prescribing is safe, and arrange relevant monitoring where required.

Structured Medication Reviews

• Undertake Structured Medication Reviews in-line with the PCN DES and implement own prescribing changes as an independent prescriber.
• Partake in MDTs to develop and implement pharmaceutical care plans.

Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments

• Manage a 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.

Medication Queries

• Provide face to face/virtual clinics for patients with medication queries.

• Manage acute prescription requests from patients and sign prescriptions for a broad range of drugs as an independent prescriber.

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.

• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and re-admissions through audit and individual patient reviews.
• Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patient groups.

Medicines Reconciliation

• 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.
• Set up and/or 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).

Service development

• Provide 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 Safety/Quality

• Identify national and local policy and guidance related to medicines that affects patient safety. Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the CCG and the LHG audit programme, and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.
• To ensure the processes for monitoring high-risk drugs is effective within the PCN.

Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

• Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economys formulary and guidelines and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).
• Audit practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.

Leadership and Management

• Line-manage a team of Pharmacist and Pharmacy Technicians.
• Provide clinical mentoring and supervision for PCN Pharmacists and Technicians.
• Support the development of new pharmacists and technicians to ensure they integrate into the clinical teams and work within their competence whilst also developing their scope of practice.

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 with the GPhC.
• Independent Prescribing.

Desirable

• Membership with the Primary Care Pharmacy Association.
• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy.
• MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice (or working towards).

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 2 years of leadership and management experience in primary care.
• Minimum of 5 years of post-registration experience.
• Experience of working as a pharmacist in General Practice.

Desirable

• Experience of working as a pharmacist across Secondary Care.
• An understanding of the nature of a super-practice in relation to Primary Care Networks.

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

Cottingham Road

Corby

Northamptonshire

NN17 2UR

Employer's website

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