Job responsibilities
Clinical Pharmacist
Job Description
Responsible to: Townships 2 PCN
Accountable to: Clinical Director
Base: Woodhouse Health Centre
Job Summary:
The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts
within their professional boundaries, supporting and working
alongside a team of pharmacists in Townships
2 member practices. In this role they will be supported by a senior clinical pharmacist who will mentor them.
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.
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Primary Duties
and Areas of Responsibility
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.
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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 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. CCGs and other
PCNs)
Demonstrates ability to work as a member
of a team
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 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
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
PCN manager/Clinical
Director
Community nurses and other allied health
professionals Community and hospital pharmacy
teams
Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation