Clinical Pharmacist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Hours: Full time - 37.5 hours per week, job share will be considered

Salary: Competitive, depending on experience

Location: To be confirmed

Primary Duties and Areas of Responsibility

Note: Duties and Areas of Responsibility will vary between the practices according to needs. They may include the following examples:

Patient facing Long Term Condition Clinics:

a.See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required

b. 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).

c. Run own long-term condition clinics where responsible for prescribing as an independent prescriber.

Patient facing clinical medication review:

a.Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for/implement changes in prescribing and monitoring.

Patient facing care home medication reviews:

a. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients/carers and produce recommendations /implement changes in prescribing and monitoring.

b. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

Patient facing domiciliary clinical medication review:

a. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for /implement changes in prescribing and monitoring.

b. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

Patient facing medicines support:

a. Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines

Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments:

a. Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence

b. Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate

Telephone medicines support:

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

Medicine information to practice staff and patients:

a. Answers relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.

b. Suggesting and recommending solutions

c. Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes

Unplanned hospital admissions:

a. Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews.

b. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to highrisk patient groups.

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital:

a. To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes, including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes and working with patients, dispensers and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge.

b. 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).

Signposting:

a. 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/dispensing:

a. Support 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.

b. Support the development of repeat dispensing services where appropriate.

c. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place

Risk stratification:

a. 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:

a. 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:

a. Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making

Medicines quality improvement:

a. Undertake clinical audits of prescribing to identify areas for improvement independently or in collaboration with colleagues. Present results & provide leadership on suggested change.

b. Contribute to local & national research initiatives

Medicines safety:

a. 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:

a. 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).

b. Assist practices in maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system.

c. Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.

d. Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

Education and training:

a. Provide education and training to primary healthcare team & visiting students on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.

Care Quality Commision:

a. Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

Public Health:

a. To support public health campaigns

b. To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public

Job Description Agreement:

This job description is intended to provide an outline of the key tasks and responsibilities only. There may be other duties required of the post-holder commensurate with the position. This description will be open to regular review and may be amended to take into account development within the Practice. All members of staff should be prepared to take on additional duties or relinquish existing duties in order to maintain the efficient running of the Practice.

This job description is intended as a basic guide to the scope and responsibilities of the post and is not exhaustive. It will be subject to regular review and amendment as necessary in consultation with the post holder.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm or equivalent).

Desirable

• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.
• Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent prescribing qualification.

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 2 years post-qualification experience.
• An appreciation of the nature of general practice
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing.
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (i.e. patients).
• Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation.
• Good IT skills.
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information.
• Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer when appropriate.
• Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines.

Desirable

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare.

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

Tone Valley Primary Care Network

Address

Taunton Vale Healthcare

Lisieux Way

Taunton

Somerset

TA1 2LB