Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

Telephone Acute Medicines Support

Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines and acute medication requests.

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).

Management Of Medicines Reconciliation of Clinic Letters

Patient Facing Long-Term Conditions Clinics

See patients face to face, or work with patients on the telephone, or by written correspondence (where appropriate 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 Reviews

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the 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.

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.

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

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.

Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.

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.

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.

Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

Education And Training

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

Care Quality Commission

Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards.

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. ICBs)

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:

o Patients

o GP, nurses and other practice staff

o Other healthcare professionals including ICB pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social care teams and dieticians etc.

o Community nurses and other allied health professionals

o Community and hospital pharmacy teams

o Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation

o Patient Reference Group

Confidentiality

In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health and other matters. They do so in confidence and have the right to expect that staff will respect their privacy and act appropriately. In the performance of the duties outlined in this job description, the post-holder will have access to confidential information relating to the Practice as a business organisation. All such information from any source is to be regarded as strictly confidential. Information relating to patients, carers, colleagues, other healthcare workers or the business of the Practice may only be divulged to authorised persons in accordance with the Practice Policies and Procedures relating to confidentiality and the protection of personal and sensitive data.

Skills

Essential

• Able to establish, maintain and develop effective communications across the Practice and with external organisations
• Excellent ICT skills
• High level literacy and numeracy skills with a passion for detail and accuracy
• Discretion in the handling of sensitive and confidential information
• Excellent interpersonal skills, able to build professional and personal credibility to gain the support of colleagues and external organisations
• Excellent oral and written communication skills; able to engage effectively with a wide ranges of audiences
• Excellent time management skills, capable of prioritising and managing competing demands and workloads

Experience

Essential

• Evidence of capacity to work successfully autonomous and as part of a team
• Experience of working with IT programs and software such as Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and the internet
• Experience of working with GP clinical systems such EMIS, SystmOne, Electronic Prescription Service
• Evidence of having achieved personal and departmental objectives within the workplace
• Experience of proactively and effectively managing phone calls/lists and requests from patients
• Experience of handling and dealing with specimens in accordance with Infection Prevention Control policies and procedures

Knowledge

Essential

• Understanding of the NHS/ Primary Care services
• Knowledge of confidentiality in the workplace/ information governance
• A good level of knowledge and understanding of the primary care sector and the healthcare sector
• Extensive knowledge of IT programs and software such as Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and the internet
• Extensive knowledge of working with GP clinical systems such EMIS, SystemOne, Electronic Prescription Service

Desirable

• A good level of knowledge and understanding of medical terminology

Additional Requirements

Essential

• Commitment to continuing professional development of self and others
• Able to maintain the consistent delivery of high quality services
• Satisfactory completion of an enhanced check through the Vetting and Barring Service (this will be taken up if offered the post)
• Legal Right to work in the UK
• Hep B - Vaccinated or willing to be vaccinated
• A commitment to anti-discriminatory practices in employment, training and service delivery
• An understanding of Health and Safety responsibilities
• Flexibility in working hours

Qualifications

Essential

• Registration with General Pharmaceutical Council
• Evidence of continuing professional development
• Post graduate masters or diploma in clinical pharmacy / management or equivalent (or working towards) or equivalent

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).