Clinical Pharmacist - Dryland Surgery

National health service; Northampton; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 62,000; Full time

Job summary

Kettering & South West Rural Primary Care Network is seeking a clinical pharmacist to join a patient‑facing GP multi‑disciplinary team at Dryland Surgery, Kettering. You will assess and treat patients, conduct structured reviews, and lead on medicines safety and quality improvement.

The role includes independent prescribing, senior clinical responsibilities, and collaboration with community and hospital pharmacy to improve patient outcomes. 2–5 days per week, permanent contract.

Qualifications

• Mandatory General Pharmaceutical Council registration and MPharm degree.
• Independent Prescriber status or current training to achieve one.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office and digital record systems.

Responsibilities

• Hold clinics for face‑to‑face medicines reviews and provide telephone support.
• Undertake structured reviews for multi‑morbidity and polypharmacy with prescribing changes as an independent prescriber.
• Design and implement computer-based searches to identify high-risk patients and support medicines optimisation.
• Lead long‑term condition clinics and manage case loads for safety and efficacy of medicines.
• Reconcile medicines on discharge and coordinate with hospital and care services.

Skills

Clinical pharmacy

Independent prescriber

Patient-facing communication

Medicines optimisation

Quality improvement

Clinical audits

Team leadership

Education

MPharm or equivalent

General Pharmaceutical Council registration

Independent Prescriber qualification

Tools

Microsoft Office

Job description

Job Summary

We are looking for a clinical pharmacist to work in a patient facing role as part of a General Practice multi‑disciplinary team, to clinically assess and treat patients at Dryland Surgery, undertake administrative processes, and provide expertise in clinical medicines management. This will include working as an independent prescriber, cost‑effective prescribing, face to face structured medication reviews, management of long term conditions, management of medicines on transfer of care, systems for safer prescribing, management of repeat prescription authorisations/reauthorisation, acute prescription request, providing advice and support to patients and colleagues, and public health and social care needs of patients. Lead on quality improvement and clinical audit, manage aspects of the QOF and enhanced services. Ensure integration and collaboration with community and hospital pharmacy, utilising skill mix, improving patient outcomes, ensuring better access to healthcare. The role is available between 2 to 5 days per week (15.0 - 37.5 hrs pw).

Details

Pay scheme: OtherSalary
Depending on experience
Subject to qualifications and experience

ContractPermanent
Working patternFull‑time, Part‑time

Reference numberA4676-26-0002

Job locationsDryland Surgery, 1 Field Street, Kettering, Northamptonshire, NN16 8JZ, United Kingdom

Job Responsibilities

• Patient Facing Medicines Support: Hold clinics for patients requiring face‑to‑face structured medication reviews. Provide telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
• Patient Facing Medication Review: Undertake structured, face‑to‑face clinical medication reviews with patients with multi‑morbidity and polypharmacy, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co‑morbidities, and implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests.
• Risk Stratification: Design, develop and implement methods of computer search to identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines. Manage risk stratification tools on behalf of the practice. Work with patients and the primary care team to minimise risk through medicines optimisation.
• Patient Facing Long‑term Condition Clinics: See patients in multi‑morbidity clinics and in partnership with primary healthcare colleagues and implement improvements to patients medicines, including de‑prescribing. Manage own case load, and oversee the case loads of team members, and run long‑term condition clinics, independently prescribing for conditions where medicines have a large component. Review the ongoing need for each medicine, the monitoring needs and support patients with their medicines taking, ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation).
• Unplanned Hospital Admissions: Devise and implement searches to identify cohorts of patients most likely to be at risk of an unplanned hospital admission and readmission from medicines. Work with case managers, multidisciplinary (health and social care) review teams, and hospital colleagues to manage medicines‑related risk for readmission and patient harm. Put in place systems to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high‑risk patient groups.
• Repeat Prescribing: Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates. Make necessary changes as an independent prescriber, and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.
• Telephone Triage: Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate clinician and/or other service provision, for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time, e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term conditions, social factors.
• Medicines Safety & Quality Improvement: Identify and provide leadership on areas of prescribing and medicines optimisation. Conduct clinical audits and improvement projects, involving and collaborating with colleagues. Present results and provide leadership on suggested change. Identify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use of medicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence from clinical trials. Manage the process of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners. Demonstrate continuous QI activity focused upon prescribing safety as specified in the QOF guidance. This work might include the PINCER tool, for example.
• Care Home Medication Reviews: Manage own caseload (and that of the team) of care home residents. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multi‑morbidity and polypharmacy and implement prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
• Domiciliary Clinical Medication Review: Manage own and team caseload of vulnerable housebound patients at risk of hospital admission and harm from poor use of medicines. Implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and ordering of monitoring tests. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences, identifying key areas of need for vulnerable patients and formulating care plans.
• 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 manage these changes without referral to a GP. Perform a clinical medication review, produce a post discharge medicines care plan including dose titration and booking of follow‑up tests 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 high‑risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes). Work in partnership with local hospital colleagues (e.g. care of the elderly doctors and clinical pharmacists) to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care.
• Management of Common/Minor/Self‑Limiting Ailments: Manage a caseload for patients with common/minor/self‑limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signpost to community pharmacy and refer to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
• Differential/Undifferential Diagnosis: Manage own and team caseload for patients and diagnose people with long term and/or acute/common conditions/ailments. Refer to a GP or other healthcare professionals where appropriate. Signpost to other services and/or healthcare professionals where appropriate.
• Medicine Information to Practice Staff and Patients: Answer relevant medicine‑related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff and patients with queries about medicines. Suggest and recommend solutions. Provide follow‑up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
• Information Management: Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
• Provide Information, Education, Guidance and Training: Provide information, education, guidance and training to colleagues and other practice staff on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
• Care Quality Commission: Provide leadership to the general practice footprint to ensure they are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved. Undertake risk assessment and management and ensure compliance with medicines legislation.
• Population and Public Health: Contribute to and support public health campaigns. Provide specialist knowledge on public health programmes (e.g. immunisation).
• Cost Saving Programmes: Assist the ICB Pharmacy Team where appropriate, by making recommendations for changes to medicines designed to save on medicine costs where a medicine or product with lower acquisition cost is now available.
• Service Development: Develop and manage new services that are built around new medicines or NICE guidance, where new medicine/recommendations allow the development of a new care pathway (e.g. new oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation).
• Implementation of Local and National Guidelines and Formulary Recommendations: Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs). Liaise directly with hospital colleagues where prescribing needs to be returned to specialists. Assist in setting and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer systems. Suggest and develop computer decision support tools to help remind prescribers about formulary choice and local recommendations. Audit the practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Provide newsletters on important prescribing messages to improve prescribers knowledge and work with the team to develop and implement other techniques known to influence implementation of evidence such as audit and feedback.

Person Specification

Essential Minimum of 3 years postgraduate experience in pharmacy (width and depth), as demonstrated within a practice portfolio. In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence‑based healthcare. An understanding of the nature of GPs and general practices. Has an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long‑term conditions that are likely to be seen in a general practice. An understanding of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing. Experience of obtaining, analysing and communicating routine and complex, technical and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g. patients, colleagues). Experience of developing and implementing common systems and processes across teams and across service boundaries. Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate with and gain the co‑operation of a wide variety of stakeholders (e.g. patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, including those from different disciplines and external organisations/sectors). Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills. Good IT skills, including the ability to use Microsoft Office applications and digital and web‑based database systems. Knowledge of and ability to work to legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies and procedures and codes of conduct and, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety.

Essential

Ability to plan, manage, monitor, advise, deliver and review general pharmaceutical care programmes for patients and medicine optimisation issues in core areas including disease states/long‑term conditions. Ability to recognise priorities when problem solving and identify deviations from the normal pattern and refer to GPs, other senior staff where appropriate. Ability to plan and manage multiple workload priorities, work under pressure and meet deadlines. Ability to manage, monitor, support and train staff. Ability to gain acceptance for recommendations and influence/motivate/persuade the audience to comply when there may be significant barriers. Ability to involve patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and support adherence as per NICE guidelines. Ability to work effectively and flexibly within a team, leading a team and on own initiative. Able to demonstrate accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision. Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions. Willingness to work flexible hours when required to meet work demands. Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including visiting people in their own homes.

Desirable

Have an understanding of the implications of working within a newly developing service and the impact of service changes on internal and external staff, and on patients.

Qualifications

Mandatory registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council. Masters Degree in Pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent. Independent Prescriber, or currently working towards an independent prescribing qualification. Immunisation Status. Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Membership of the Primary Care Pharmacy Association (PCPA). Member, or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Medicine Management Qualification. Minor Ailments Certificate. Specialist knowledge gained through post‑graduate diploma or equivalent training/experience. Information Governance Toolkit completion. Basic Life Support Training.

Other

Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions. Willingness to work flexible hours when required to meet work demands. Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including visiting people in their own homes.

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 Registration. Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer Details

Employer nameKettering & South West Rural Primary Care NetworkAddressDryland Surgery1 Field StreetKetteringNorthamptonshireNN16 8JZUnited KingdomEmployer's website