Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

• Main Objectives:

The Clinical Pharmacist will work within their competencies to:

• Increase safety and quality of prescribed medicines
• Provide support on medicine related issues to the whole practice team
• Be a point of contact for patients regarding medication queries
• Link between pharmacists (community, hospital and service commissioner)
• Support medication reviews
• Enhance continuity of care for patients
• Provide lead on audits and target reviews

You will work as part of the Vine clinical team to improve value and outcomes from medicines and consult with and treat patients directly. This includes providing extra help to manage long-term conditions, advice for those on multiple medicines, better access to health checks and treating patients with more complex conditions.

You will provide expertise in clinical medicines review and address public health and social needs of patients in the practice population whilst reducing inappropriate and wasteful prescribing through clinical medication reviews. This includes reconciling medicines following hospital discharge and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post-discharge. You will contribute to reductions in medicine related hospital admissions and readmissions by supporting patients to get the best outcomes from their medicines and identifying and addressing medicines related issues. You will also create an interface with community and hospital pharmacy colleagues and develop referral processes between primary care professionals.

You will support the management of the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing requests for repeat prescriptions and medicines reaching review dates as required to ensure a streamlined service.

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 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.
• Support the 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.
• Signpost 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.
• Provide 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.
• Provide follow up appointments 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:

• 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:

• Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorization 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:

• Identify 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, feed back 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 economy's 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 practice in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system.
• Audit practice 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 where medicines are involved.

Public health:

• Support public health campaigns.
• Provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.

Please see attached document for additional job specifications.

Personal Qualities

Essential

• Self-motivated and proactive
• Adaptability, flexibility and ability to cope with uncertainty and change
• Excellent time keeping and prioritisation
• Demonstrate ability to work in a busy environment; ability to deal with both urgent and important tasks and to prioritise effectively whilst also supporting others
• Flexible approach to meet service needs and ensure a stakeholder focused response
• Works effectively independently and as a member of a team

Other

Essential

• Flexibility to work outside of core office hours
• Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) check
• Safeguarding adult and children level three
• Immunisation status

Desirable

• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including visiting people in their own home
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including visiting people in their own home

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare.
• 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 (e.g. patients)
• Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• Computer literate with an ability to use the required GP clinical systems (desirable) and Microsoft office packages (essential)
• 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 to seniors or GPs when appropriate
• Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines
• Produce timely and informative reports
• Gain acceptance for recommendations and influence/motivate/ persuade the audience to comply with the recommendations/agreed course of action where there may be significant barriers
• Work effectively independently and as a team member
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision

Desirable

• An appreciation of the nature of GPs and general practices
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing

Qualifications

Essential

• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (Or equivalent)
• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience
• Independent prescriber or working towards gaining independent prescribing qualification
• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• A member of or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Experience

Essential

• Minimum 2 years post qualification experience

Desirable

• Recent General Clinical Pharmacy Activity relevant to Primary Care
• Previous experience of providing prescribing advice or support in primary or secondary care
• Experience of delivering patient clinics or services

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).