Clinical Pharmacist (Practice Based)

Integrated Care System; Radstock; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A community healthcare provider in Radstock is seeking an experienced clinical pharmacist to support GP practices in managing prescriptions and improving patient care. You will be responsible for medication reviews, chronic disease management, and providing expert advice on prescriptions. Successful candidates will have prior experience and a willingness to pursue further qualifications in independent prescribing. This role offers the opportunity to make a significant impact on patient outcomes within a supportive multidisciplinary team.

Benefits

Support for further professional education

Collaborative working environment

Qualifications

• Experience with chronic disease management.
• Ability to conduct clinical medication reviews.
• Knowledge of public health initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Support prescribing and medication queries in practice.
• Manage chronic diseases and medication reviews.
• Provide patient-facing clinics for medication support.

Skills

Patient communication

Clinical medication management

Leadership

Pharmaceutical knowledge

Education

Pharmacist qualification

Independent prescribing qualification (or working towards)

Job description

The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries, support the repeat prescriptions system, deal with acute prescription requests, 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 patients in the GP practice/s.

The post holder will provide clinical leadership in the GP Practice on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services. The postholder will be working towards or utilising their non-medical prescribing qualification.

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.

Successful candidates will be enrolled on the CPPE Primary Care Education pathway and subsequently an Independent Prescribing course (if not already qualified) and be mentored by a GP.

Main duties of the job

The post holder is an experienced pharmacist acting within their professional boundaries.

The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team, primarily in a patient-facing role:

• taking responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice
• undertaking clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities.

About us

3 Valleys Health Primary Care Network is a group of 8 general practices covering circa 68k patients living in rural and semi-rural North-East Somerset and within easy commuting distance of Bath and Bristol.

Currently we have a team of 8 Clinical Pharmacists and 5 Pharmacy Technicians working within the PCN. Each colleague is embedded in one or two practices only and at the same time they are part of a bigger PCN supportive peer group which meets regularly. There are opportunities to develop areas of special interest and participate in PCN projects within the role.

We would like to expand our Pharmacy team further and have a vacancy in the Midsomer Norton/Radstock area.

Job responsibilities

Example Duties and ResponsibilitiesThe following is a list of all possible duties and responsibilities that the post holder may undertake but theactual duties will be negotiated with the practice/s depending on the number of sessions they havecommissioned and will also be based on practices needs and the Clinical Pharmacists expertise.

THE POSSIBLE DUTIES COULD INCLUDE:Patient facing long-term condition clinicsSee patients in multimorbidity clinics and in partnership with primary healthcare colleaguesand implement improvements to patients medicines, including de-prescribing.Manage own case load and run long-term condition clinics where responsible for prescribingas an independent prescriber for conditions where medicines have a large component (e.g.medicine optimisation for stable angina symptom control, warfarin monitoring and doseadjustment for patients requiring longterm anticoagulants).Review the on-going need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and anopportunity to support patients with their medicines taking ensuring they get the best use oftheir medicines i.e. medicines optimisation.Patient facing clinical medication reviewUndertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacyand implement own prescribing changes as an independent prescriber and order relevantmonitoring tests.Patient facing care home/residential clinical medication reviewsManage own caseload of care home residents. Undertake clinical medication reviews withpatients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes asan independent prescriber and order relevant monitoring tests.Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

Management of common minor or self-limiting ailmentsManaging caseload for patients with common, minor orself-limiting ailments while working withina scope of practice and limits of competence.Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionalswhere appropriate.Differential and Undifferential diagnosis

Manage own caseload for patients and diagnose people with long term and or acute commonconditions ailments while remaining within scope of practice and limits of competence.Refer to GP and or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

Patient facing medicines supportProvide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about theirmedicines in the practice.Telephone medicines support23Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about theirmedicines.

Medicine information to practice staff and patientsAnswer all medicine related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other Healthcare teams and patients.Suggest and recommend solutions.Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.Unplanned hospital admissionsDevise and implement practice searches to identify cohorts of patients most likely to be atrisk of an unplanned admission and readmissions from medicines.Work with case managers, multidisciplinary review teams, hospitalcolleagues and virtual ward teams to manage medicines-related risk for re-admission andpatient harm.Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patientgroups.Management of medicines at discharge from hospitalReconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into carehomes, including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes, and manage these changeswithout referral to a GPPerform clinical medication reviews, produce post discharge medicines care plans includingdose titration and booking of follow up tests, and work with patients and communitypharmacists 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 ofpatients.

Work in partnership with hospital colleagues to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems beforethey are discharged to ensure continuity of care.Telephone triageEnsure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for theappropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time e.g. pathology test results,common or minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc.

Repeat prescribingProduce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy. Manage the repeat prescribingre-authorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewingmedicines reaching review dates; make necessary changes as an independent prescriber,and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.

Risk stratificationDesign, develop and implement computer searches to identify cohorts of patients at high riskof harm from medicines.Responsible for management of risk stratification tools on behalf of the practice.Working with patients and the primary care team to minimise risks through medicinesoptimisation.Service developmentDevelop and manage new services that are built around new medicines or NICE guidance,where new medicine or recommendations allow the development of a new care pathways.

Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to supportdecision-making.

Medicines Quality Improvement programmesIdentify and provide leadership on areas of prescribing and medicines optimisation.Conduct clinical audits and improve projects or work with colleagues such as GP registrars,practice managers etc.4Present results and provide leadership on suggested changes. Contribute to national andlocal research initiatives.

Medicines safetyIdentify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use ofmedicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence form clinicaltrials.Manage the process of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners.Care Quality CommissionProvide leadership to the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQCstandards where medicines are involved.Undertake risk assessment and management and ensure compliance with medicineslegislation.Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendationsMonitor practice prescribing against the local health economies RAG list for medicines thatshould 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.Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.

Providenewsletters on important prescribing messages to improve prescribers knowledge and workwith the team to develop and implement other techniques known to influence implementationof evidence such as audit and feedback.Education and TrainingProvide education and training to the primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicinesoptimisation.

Provide training to visiting medical, nursing, pharmacy and other healthcare students whereappropriate.The post holder will be required to undertake the national CPPE modular training programmeof 26 days in the first 18 months.Public healthTo support public health campaigns. To provide specialist knowledge on all public healthprogrammes available to general public.

Collaborative Working RelationshipsRecognise the roles of other colleagues within the Practice and their role in relation to patientcare.Demonstrate use of appropriate communication to gain the co-operation of relevantstakeholders.Recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleagues when necessary.Actively work toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both withinand outside the practice and locality.Foster and maintain strong links with all services across locality.Explore the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustainsuch relationships.Demonstrate ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacyteams.Liaise with ICB colleagues including ICB Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensureconsistency of patient care and benefit.Liaise with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Experience and awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in a general medical practice.
• Able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general pharmaceutical care programmes for patients across core areas, including disease states/long term conditions.
• Use skills in a range of routine situations requiring analysis or comparison of a range of options.
• Recognise priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate.
• Able to follow legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct.
• Involve patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidelines.
• Demonstrate ability to improve quality within limitations of service.
• Review yearly progress and develop clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others.
• Demonstrate ability to motivate self to achieve goals.
• Promote diversity and equality in people management techniques and lead by example.
• Demonstrate understanding of the process for effective resource utilisation.
• Demonstrate understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards of practice.
• Demonstrate ability to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol.
• Demonstrate ability to extend boundaries of service delivery within the team.
• Demonstrate self-development through continuous professional development activity.
• Participate in the delivery of formal education programmes within the practice; inspiring others to be positive in their support of continuous improvement.
• Demonstrate ability to critically evaluate and review literature.
• Demonstrate ability to identify where there is a gap in the evidence base to support practice.
• Demonstrate ability to generate evidence suitable for presentations at practice and local level.
• Demonstrate ability to apply research evidence base into working place.
• Demonstrate understanding of principles of research governance.
• Post graduate experience in pharmacy, as demonstrated within a practice portfolio very helpful but not essential.
• Hold, or be working towards, an independent prescribing qualification, or be willing to work towards a qualification.
• Accountable for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision
• Lead and mentor a team within the practice of differing abilities.
• Education Training and Development

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.