Medway Rainham Primary Care Network

PCN Clinical Pharmacist

Information:

This job is now closed

Job summary

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a prescribing Pharmacist to apply to become a Clinical Pharmacist working as an integral part of the team within a PCN.

The role is practice based and the successful applicants will work with groups of practices, focusing on older people with frailty (multi-morbidity) and patients with long term conditions; cardiovascular disease; asthma/COPD and diabetes. The successful candidate will also be expected to support practices in areas such as optimising the management of AF through appropriate anticoagulation, high risk medication monitoring and prescribing safety in line with the delivery of the new GP contract.

Main duties of the job

The successful applicant will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role taking responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practices and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex poly-pharmacy. They will also provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries.

The Clinical Pharmacists will be required to build effective working relationships both internally and externally to realise the high standards the practice aims to achieve. In return, the successful candidate will be joining the practice in a role ideally positioned to make a positive difference to patient care, as well as being part of a team committed to developing its staff.

About us

Welcome to Medway Rainham Primary Care Network. We are a group of 8 GP practices working collaboratively since July 2019.

Our vision is to share best practice and make meaningful changes together so that we can give better care to our patients.

This is an organisation while continuing to provide the usual GP services for our respective patients would work to co-ordinate activities around patients groups requiring continued care. We hope to work with wider group of authorised providers where necessary to improve patients care pathway.

We are determined to focus on our population health and support prevention activities which includes Covid Vaccination Programme.

We hope to communicate our extended organisations mutual development through this medium going forward.

Details

Date posted

05 August 2024

Pay scheme

Other

Salary

Depending on experience

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

A4765-24-0004

Job locations

Blue Suite, Rainham Healthy Living Centre

103-107 High Street

Rainham, Kent

Kent

ME8 8AA


Job description

Job responsibilities

Job Scope

The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice.

The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role. The post holder will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy.

The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescription system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicines reconciliation on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, providing expertise in clinical medicines advice while addressing both public and social care needs of patient in the GP practice (s).

The post holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.

The post holder will ensure that the practice integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage workload. The 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 nonmedical prescriber.

Key duties and responsibilities

  • 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 Senior Pharmacists or 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 reviews

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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).

  • 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

  • Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy.

  • 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 where medicines are involved.

  • 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 careDemonstrates 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. CCGs)Demonstrates ability to work as a member of a teamIs able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessaryActively work toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the practice and localityFoster and maintain strong links with all services across localityExplores the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationshipsDemonstrates ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams

  • Liaises with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to Patients GP, nurses and other practice staff

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

  • Locality / GP prescribing lead

  • Locality managers

  • Community nurses and other allied health professionals

  • Community and hospital pharmacy teams

  • Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimization

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job Scope

The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice.

The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role. The post holder will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy.

The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescription system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicines reconciliation on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, providing expertise in clinical medicines advice while addressing both public and social care needs of patient in the GP practice (s).

The post holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.

The post holder will ensure that the practice integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage workload. The 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 nonmedical prescriber.

Key duties and responsibilities

  • 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 Senior Pharmacists or 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 reviews

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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).

  • 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

  • Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy.

  • 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 where medicines are involved.

  • 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 careDemonstrates 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. CCGs)Demonstrates ability to work as a member of a teamIs able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessaryActively work toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the practice and localityFoster and maintain strong links with all services across localityExplores the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationshipsDemonstrates ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams

  • Liaises with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to Patients GP, nurses and other practice staff

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

  • Locality / GP prescribing lead

  • Locality managers

  • Community nurses and other allied health professionals

  • Community and hospital pharmacy teams

  • Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimization

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

  • Minimum of 2 years postqualification experience.
  • In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidencebased healthcare.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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 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
  • Other
  • Self-Motivation
  • Adaptable
  • Full Driving Licence
  • In date CRB
  • Information Governance toolkit completion
  • Safeguarding adult and children level three
  • Immunisation status
  • Basic life support training

Qualifications

Essential

  • 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
Person Specification

Experience

Essential

  • Minimum of 2 years postqualification experience.
  • In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidencebased healthcare.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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 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
  • Other
  • Self-Motivation
  • Adaptable
  • Full Driving Licence
  • In date CRB
  • Information Governance toolkit completion
  • Safeguarding adult and children level three
  • Immunisation status
  • Basic life support training

Qualifications

Essential

  • 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

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).

Additional information

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

Medway Rainham Primary Care Network

Address

Blue Suite, Rainham Healthy Living Centre

103-107 High Street

Rainham, Kent

Kent

ME8 8AA


Employer's website

https://mrpcn.gpweb.org.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)

Employer details

Employer name

Medway Rainham Primary Care Network

Address

Blue Suite, Rainham Healthy Living Centre

103-107 High Street

Rainham, Kent

Kent

ME8 8AA


Employer's website

https://mrpcn.gpweb.org.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)

Employer contact details

For questions about the job, contact:

Details

Date posted

05 August 2024

Pay scheme

Other

Salary

Depending on experience

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

A4765-24-0004

Job locations

Blue Suite, Rainham Healthy Living Centre

103-107 High Street

Rainham, Kent

Kent

ME8 8AA


Privacy notice

Medway Rainham Primary Care Network's privacy notice (opens in a new tab)