Job responsibilities
Job Title:South Southwark Primary Care Network Pharmacist
Salary: £47,000 - £53,000 - Depending on experience
Working Hours: Full-Time/Part Time
Responsible to: Primary Care Network Neighbourhood
Accountable to: Improving Health Ltd
1. Background
We are seeking self-motivated and forward-thinking pharmacists to join our well-established and successful team of thirteen pharmacists and two pharmacy technicians. You will work across our network providing dedicated support to general practice and our local population.
The successful candidate will be well supported through shadowing, robust clinical supervision arrangements and clinical pharmacy team meetings to facilitate shared learning and good practice. The post holder will be supported with development and learning needs, including enrolment onto the CPPE Primary Care Pharmacy Education Pathway, and developing as an independent prescriber. The successful candidate will work alongside other clinicians as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role.
Our South Southwark PCN is made up of eighteen GP Practices across four neighbourhoods - Camberwell, Peckham, Nunhead and Dulwich, serving approximately 154,000 patients, supported by their GP Federation, Improving Health.
The NHS Long Term Plan describes the prominent role Primary Care Networks play in delivering proactive, personalised and more integrated health and social care for their local populations. This will require collaborative working between organisations including GP practices, acute and community health, social care organisations and the voluntary and community sector.
2. Job summary
This is an exciting role which will contribute to the reshaping of neighbourhood care for our populations, directed and supported by the South Southwark Primary Care Network. The post holder will work within their clinical competencies as part of a multi-disciplinary team to
- support long-term condition management within the practice including medication reviews.
- provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.
- provide support on prescription/medication queries and processes.
- facilitate better working with community and hospital pharmacy.
- Supervise foundation trainee pharmacists and undergraduate pharmacists
You will contribute to ongoing service developments, providing data and progress updates, and sharing insights into how the PCN could better support and care for its population.
3. Key responsibilities
Patient facing:
- Long-term condition medicines, including de-prescribing. clinics
- Medication reviews Hypertension, Asthma COPD, etc.
- Management of care homes and house bounds) with multimorbidity and common/minor/self- polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes and order limiting ailments relevant monitoring tests.
- Differential/nondifferential diagnosis
Non-Patient Facing:
- Medicines information with queries about medicines.
- Audits
- Medicines reconciliation rectifying unexplained changes
- Signposting
- Risk stratification
- Service development / Collaborative working optimisation.
- Medicines quality improvements
- Medicines safety and clinical research
- Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations
- Education and training
Individual responsibilities
The post holder has a responsibility to adhere to all IHL policies, procedures and relevant legislation including the requirements of any professional bodies; maintain satisfactory personal performances and professional standards and to achieve agreed objectives for their role; attend mandatory training as identified by IHL and contribute to their own development.
This is a summary of job description and should not be regarded as an inflexible specification. Priorities may change in line with service needs and new duties introduced after consultation with the post holder.
Person Specification
Essential
Professional Registration
- Mandatory registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council GPhC.
Qualifications
- Masters degree in pharmacy MPharm or equivalent
Skills, knowledge, and experience
- Minimum of 2 years post qualification experience
- In-depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare.
- An understanding of general practice and challenges they currently face.
- An understanding 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
- 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.
- Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
- Produce timely and informative reports.
- Work effectively, independently and as a team member.
- Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision
- 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.
Personal Qualities/other
- Motivated, confident, and able to inspire a team.
- An excellent communicator able to listen and engage with both professionals and patients in ways they will understand.
- Adaptable and pro-active Ability to work on own initiative, able to plan, prioritise, make decisions, and meet deadlines.
- Excellent interpersonal skills particularly with prescribers, older people, and carers
- Ability to deal with difficult issues/situations with diplomacy and sensitivity.
- Able to move easily between teams of general practice staff and different patient groups.
- Ability to challenge poor processes and practice.
- In date CRB
- Safeguarding adult and children - level three
- Immunisation status
- Basic life support training
Desirable:
Professional Registration
- Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
- A member of or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Qualifications
- Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.
Personal Qualities/other
- Information governance toolkit completion
- Passionate about working in a learning environment and empowering people through education and personal development.
Equality and Diversity
- Recognising the rights of patients, carers, relatives, and colleagues and respecting their needs, beliefs, privacy, and dignity.
- Not discriminating against patients, carers, relatives, or colleagues on the grounds of any of the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 or its amendments or later legislation.
- Respecting the rights of patients to accept or refuse treatment or a care provider.
Personal/Professional Development
- Participate in an annual individual performance review, including taking responsibility for maintaining a record of own personal and/or professional development.
- Participate in any training programme implemented by the PCN.
- Continuing Professional Development in line with professional registration and identified within Personal Development Plan
Confidentiality
Confidentiality in relation to patient data must be maintained at all times. In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with or allow us to gather sensitive information relating to their health or 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 may have access to information relating to patients and/or their carers, practice staff and other healthcare workers. The post holder may also have access to information relating to the Practice. 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 Practice policies and procedures relating to confidentiality and the protection of personal and sensitive data.
Health & Safety:
The post holder will assist in promoting and maintaining their own and others health, safety and security as defined in the Practices Health and Safety policy, including use of personal security systems within the workplace, according to Practice guidelines, identifying risks involved in work activities and undertaking such activities in such a way as to manage those risks, making effective use of training to update knowledge and skills, using appropriate infection control procedures and maintaining work areas in a tidy and safe way and free from hazards and reporting potential risks when identified.
DBS Disclosure
This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. You must therefore disclose all spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands, and final warnings. If you are offered the post, we will need to obtain a satisfactory DBS disclosure for you.
The main duties and responsibilities shown above are not exhaustive but should merely be regarded as a guide. The post-holder will be expected to conduct any reasonable activities according to the business needs at that time. These will be subject to periodic review and may be amended to meet the challenging needs of the business. The post-holder will be expected to participate in this process and the company would aim to reach agreement to changes.
