PCN Clinical Pharmacist

Job responsibilities

JOB PURPOSE

The post holder is a clinical pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice. In this role they will be supported by a senior clinical pharmacist who will develop, manage and mentor them and by a GP who will provide clinical supervision.

To provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement as well as managing aspects of medicines safety and antimicrobial stewardship.

To work as part of a multidisciplinary team in a patient facing role and 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 for prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescription system 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 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 excellent service within general practice. The clinical pharmacist will organise practice based meetings with local community pharmacists to improve collaborative working and explore how to best support patients to access and get the best from their medicines.

The post holder will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical prescriber.

Main Duties and Areas of Responsibility

Medication review for Older People with Frailty: Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients (including patients in care homes) and produce recommendations for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.

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.

To support the care closer to home integrated networks.

• Set up and manage systems to identify and support high-risk groups of patients (e.g. those on 4+ medicines or unplanned admissions).
• Provide advice on medicines optimisation and develop personalised care plans.

Long-term condition clinics, e.g. Diabetes

• See patients with single medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma).
• Make recommendations to GPs for medicine improvements.

Clinical advice and expertise on medicines to practice staff, multidisciplinary teams and patients

• Answers all medicine--related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff and patients with queries about medicines.
• Signposting to community pharmacy for management of minor illness, medicines use reviews, new medicines service and other locally commissioned service.
• Referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals, where appropriate.

Training & supervision

• Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics, medicines optimisation, consultation skills and motivational interviewing.
• Support networks for the clinical pharmacists in the local health economy: community pharmacists; hospital and CCG prescribing advisers.
• To support the RPS Faculty development for clinical pharmacists.

Medicines safety

• Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
• Undertake simple audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Antibiotic Stewardship

Promotion of evidence-based practice and interventions to prevent the development of infections to practice.

Key working relationships:

• Patients
• GP, nurses and other practice staff
• Community pharmacists and support staff
• Other members of the medicines management (MM) team including pharmacists, technicians and dieticians
• Locality / GP prescribing lead
• Locality managers
• Community nurses and other allied health professionals
• Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation

Responsibilities underpinning the role:

• To develop and facilitate a good working relationship with community pharmacists and other local providers of healthcare.
• To plan and organise own workload, including audit and project work, and training sessions for members of the, practice team, community nurse team, patients, and carers.
• To record personally generated information and maintain a database of information relating to the work done in the practice(s). Personally generated information includes information and records relating to audit and clinical work undertaken by the post holder, reference notes relating to clinical/technical information. The database includes maintaining up-to-date, detailed records of all work done in the practices for which the post holder is accountable (done by the post holder or others)
• To maintain registration as a pharmacist and comply with appropriate professional codes.
• As appropriate to the post, to maintain and develop professional competence and expertise, keep up to date with medical/therapeutic evidence and opinion, and local and national service, legislation and policy developments, agree objectives and a personal development plan and participate in the appraisal process.
• To attend local, regional and national meetings of relevance as agreed with the post holder’s line manager.
• To undertake any other duties commensurate with the post holder’s grade as agreed with the post holder’s line manager.
• All employees should understand that it is their personal responsibility to comply with all organisational and statutory requirements (e.g. health and safety, equal treatment and diversity, confidentiality and clinical governance).

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 3 years post-qualification experience.
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence based 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.
• Good IT skills.
• Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate.
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.

Desirable

• Experience of motivational interviewing and able to train other staff.
• Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences.
• Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• Familiarity with GP systems.
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information.

Professional registration

Essential

• Registration with General Pharmaceutical Council

Desirable

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

Personal qualities

Essential

• Reliable
• Self-motivated
• Work autonomously
• Able to work under pressure to meet deadlines, whilst maintaining accuracy and attention to detail
• Able to work at part of a multi-disciplinary team
• Commitment to CPD

Qualifications

Essential

• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent

Desirable

• Post-graduate clinical diploma level or equivalent training/experience
• Post-graduate independent prescriber 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).