Job responsibilities
1. CLINICAL RESPONSIBILITIES
- To provide a high-quality clinical pharmacy service as part of the multidisciplinary team to medical specialities patients, to ensure maximum efficacy, safety, and economic drug use and to demonstrate professional accountability to enhance patient care. The responsibilities will include:
- Regular attendance of consultant ward rounds and multidisciplinary team meetings.
- Demonstration of expert clinical knowledge
- Delivery of a high quality, specialist ward-based pharmacy service. This involves.
- taking medication histories from patients admitted to the wards, clarifying inconsistencies with the patients GP or Community Pharmacist,
- ensuring appropriate use of patients own drugs brought from home,
- timely supply of medicines for both in-patients and discharge
- review of highly complex medication regimens, clarification of medication changes made during inpatient stay by liaising with the medical team,
- drug interaction and adverse drug reaction monitoring
- medicines optimisation
- To make clinical decisions where limited/conflicting information is available.
- To ensure compliance with local policies including medicines policy, formulary, and microbiology guidelines. To challenge prescribing practices where necessary.
- Promotion of high quality and cost-effective prescribing.
- To be the main pharmacy contact for a designated area in Medicine or Medical specialities including acute medicine, rheumatology, respiratory, dermatology or immunology.
- Development and review of Patient Group Directions
- Development and review of Shared Care guidelines
- Implementation of relevant local and national guidelines within the specialist area
- Assist in the implementation and evaluation of Drug Usage Reviews and clinical audits and implement changes in prescribing practice accordingly.
- To liaise and work with other specialist pharmacists to share the best practice, to strengthen patient focused pharmaceutical care.
2. RESPONSIBILITY FOR PATIENTS
To assist in the planning and organising of a clinical pharmacy service to acute medicine and medical specialities to patients in our service in both the inpatient and outpatient settings.
To qualify as an independent prescriber and where appropriate to improve patient care and safety, to continue to develop the role of pharmacist independent prescriber within a designated clinical area.
To provide clinical screening and dispensing support to the Medicine pharmacy team and medical satellite to ensure the accurate and timely dispensing of prescriptions. To assist with the timely screening and checking of discharge prescriptions.
To provide medicines management reviews for complex patients.
To liaise with doctors, administration staff and patients to ensure the safe and smooth running of the home delivery service.
To deal effectively with situations where medication errors have occurred, including liaising directly with patients and staff concerned.
Assist in responding to complaints from patients and the public in relation to medicines management issues as required.
3. RESPONSIBILITY FOR POLICY AND SERVICE DEVELOPMENT
To assist in the production and implementation of business plans for the development of the pharmacy service provided to the medicine team.
To assist in the formulation, prioritisation, and implementation of long-term strategic plans for clinical pharmacy services in line with local, network and national objectives.
- Contribute to the development of and ensuring adherence to evidence based prescribing guidelines.
- Ensuring compliance with CQC medicine related outcomes, NICE appraisals, and other government related initiatives
- To ensure that all pharmacy activities, procedures, and documentation within the speciality are carried out in accordance with standard operating procedures and relevant medicines legislation.
- To assist in the implementation of the Trusts Clinical Governance agenda within medicine specialities
- To identify the risks of medicines use in the directorate and implement strategies to minimise them, working closely with the governance leads within the specialities. Assist in the implementation of government led strategies to improve medication safety including implementation of any safety alerts relevant to the medicine team.
To assist in the management of changes that need to occur to maximise patient care and to consider and act upon the implications of the change to other areas/personnel.
4. RESPONSIBILITY FOR FINANCIAL AND PHYSICAL RESOURCES
To contribute to the management of the drug budget within the specialities. The responsibilities will include:
- Provision of detailed evaluated reports on drug expenditure to the operations lead, clinical services leads, and division as required.
- To identify and participate in any cost efficiency projects within the specialist area.
- Forecasting new drug developments and identify changes in prescribing practice that may impact on the speciality drugs budget.
- Interpreting published data on new drugs for use within medical specialities and to prepare evaluations and present applications to the Drug and Therapeutics Committee. To communicate relevant decisions back to the specialty care group.
- To support the commissioning and funding processes for intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) including adherence to the national NHSE commissioning policy and evaluation of evidence for use
- To provide advice on high-cost drugs to facilitate the seamless transition of patient care between primary and secondary sectors, by liaising with consultants and patients and primary care colleagues.
- 5. RESPONSIBILITY FOR LEADING AND MANAGING
To deputise for the Principal Pharmacist Medicine in his/her absence.
To manage and support the development of Band 7 Senior Pharmacists, band 6 rotational pharmacists and trainee pharmacists rotating through the medicine team. This will include the setting of objectives and the undertaking of annual appraisals.
To assist with the day-to-day management of the pharmacy service provided to the medical wards including allocation of workload, dealing with sickness, prioritising discharges.
To assist in the management of changes that need to occur to maximise patient care and to consider and act upon the implications of the change to other areas/personnel.
To manage difficult and ambiguous situations and be aware of ethical dilemmas that may present in patient care and provide support and guidance to colleagues in any decision-making process.
6. RESPONSIBILITY FOR INFORMATION RESOURCES
To prepare reports in response to freedom of information act enquiries.
To prepare drug expenditure reports
To develop quantitative and qualitative performance measures, co-ordinate their use and be involved in disseminating and acting on the information gathered.
To be competent in the use of JAC pharmacy system, Cerner, and other relevant hospital IT systems
To be compliant with Trust data protection and patient confidentiality policies
To ensure all relevant databases (e.g. high-cost drugs database / immunoglobulin database) are kept up to date.
To contribute to the ongoing implementation and development of the electronic prescribing and administration system (EPMA).
7. RESPONSIBILITY FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
- To support relevant medical, nursing and pharmacy staff to ensure that trials are run efficiently and effectively.
- To provide expert specialist information to research nurses and consultants regarding new drugs and therapies to be used within clinical trials.
- To undertake and co-ordinate clinical research and audit projects and publish or present these findings. To supervise and advise other members of the pharmacy team research projects.
- To implement findings of research into clinical practice.
To be responsible for ensuring that (s)he remains aware of current developments in pharmacy and relevant specialist clinical practices.
To complete minimum of mandatory requirement of revalidation activities as required by the GPhC.
To be compliant with statutory and mandatory training
To demonstrate a commitment to ongoing registration requirements or any national professional or occupational standards associated with the role.
GENERAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Infection Control
Health and Safety at Work
Confidentiality & Data Protection
Conflict of Interest
Equality and Diversity
Vulnerable Groups
Smoke Free
Sustainability
The Trust places great importance on sustainable development, reducing their carbon footprint and maximising the positive social, economic, and environmental outcomes of Trust actions and activities. As an employee it will be your responsibility to minimise your environmental impact, use resources efficiently, saving energy by switching off unnecessary equipment, reducing waste generation, using recycling/redistribution facilities, minimising travel, and saving water when possible. If your role involves purchasing/ordering supplies, you must consider the environmental impacts and purchase optimal sustainable products and services.
Sustainability is integral to the Trust achieving the NHS Net Zero target. All staff are therefore expected to be aware of the Greener RFL & NHS agenda (via induction/ESR/other training) and actively encouraged/supported to implement new ways of working within their field of expertise that reduce harmful emissions and waste.
