LS25/26 PCN Clinical Pharmacist

NHS; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent healthcare organization in Leeds is seeking a clinical pharmacist to join their forward-thinking team dedicated to enhancing patient care. The role includes conducting clinical medication reviews, providing medicine support, and managing common ailments. Candidates should possess a pharmacy degree and be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council. Excellent communication skills and teamwork are essential, with opportunities for professional development and training available.

Benefits

Professional development opportunities

Collaborative working environment

Access to training programs

Qualifications

• Experience as a foundation-level pharmacist demonstrated in a practice portfolio.
• Awareness of common acute and long-term conditions in general practice.
• Ability to work collaboratively with various healthcare teams.

Responsibilities

• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients.
• Conduct clinical audits of prescribing.
• Provide patient-facing clinics for medicine queries.
• Reconcile medicines following hospital discharge.

Skills

Patient care management

Excellent communication skills

Clinical audits

Team collaboration

Education

Undergraduate degree in pharmacy

Registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council

Job description

Job Summary

We are looking for a further clinical pharmacist to join the existing LS25/26 PCN pharmacy team. The team consists of 1 lead pharmacist, 1 senior pharmacist, 5 clinical pharmacists and 2 pharmacy technicians, who are well supported by 2 Clinical Directors.

This role will hosted by South & East Leeds (SEL) GP Group, and you will be working in the LS25/26 PCN.

LS25/26 PCN has a patient population of circa 75,000 across 7 practices: Garforth Medical Practice, Gibson Lane Practice, Kippax Hall Surgery, Lofthouse Surgery, Moorfield House Surgery, Nova Scotia Medical Centre and Oulton Medical Centre.

Main Duties of the Job

We are a dynamic, forward thinking PCN team who are passionate about developing and delivering excellent quality local services to meet the needs of our patients. Please have a look at our website to find out more about our team, projects, services, and partners.

https://www.ls2526pcn.co.uk

We are excited to be recruiting an additional pharmacist for our PCN. The successful candidate will join our experienced and diverse PCN team, which in addition to pharmacists/pharmacy technicians includes Advanced Nurse Practitioners, social prescribers, health and wellbeing coaches, care coordinators and physiotherapists.

The pharmacy team aims to provide the best patient care possible. You will work in a patient-facing role, supporting patients to manage long‑term conditions effectively through Structured Medication Reviews. You will work as part of the MDT and provide support to practices, care homes and patients with medication queries, medicines policies and procedures, QOF/local incentive schemes, prescribing processes, audit and medicines safety.

You will be a great team player, but also capable of independent, autonomous work. You will have excellent inter‑personal skills, communication skills and be committed to providing exceptional patient care. There are plenty of support and training opportunities available. The role will be a mixture of working in practice and from home. Pharmacists from any sector with a passion for primary care are welcome to apply.

Key Responsibilities

1. Patient‑facing Clinical Medication Review – Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring. These reviews could be cohort based, in care homes, polypharmacy or any other area required by the PCN, within the pharmacist’s competence. Home visits may be required.
2. Medicines quality improvement – Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the PCN, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team. Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through computer searches. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high‑risk patient groups.
3. Medicines safety – Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
4. Management of common/minor/self‑limiting ailments – Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Sign‑posting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
5. Patient‑facing medicines support – Provide patient‑facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice.
6. Telephone medicines support – Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
7. Management of medicines at change of care setting – Reconcile medicines following discharge from hospital or admission to intermediate care or 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. 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).
8. Medicine information to practice staff and patients – Answer relevant medicine‑related enquiries from GPs, other network staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines. Suggest and recommend solutions. Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
9. Drug monitoring – Ensure robust systems are in place for drug monitoring at each practice across the PCN, streamlining these where possible. Understand and apply the traffic light classifications for prescribing in the Leeds Health Economy.
10. Signposting – Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time (e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long‑term condition reviews etc.).
11. Repeat prescribing – Ensure each practice in the PCN has a robust repeat prescribing policy, and streamline these across the PCN where possible. You may be asked to contribute to the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring in place when required.
12. Service development – Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).
13. Information management – Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
14. Education and training – Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
15. Care Quality Commission – Work with the general practice teams to ensure the practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
16. Public health – Support public health campaigns. Provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.
17. Collaborative working arrangements – Work collaboratively with the PCN Clinical Director. Participate in the PCN MDT. Liaise with the Leeds GP Confederation Clinical Pharmacy team to benefit from peer support. Liaise with CCG Medicines Commissioning colleagues on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit. Engage with the Leeds Practice Pharmacist and Technician Network and with the other SEL GP‑employed pharmacists for peer support. Foster and maintain strong links with all services across the PCN and neighbouring networks. Explore the potential for collaborative working and take opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships.
18. Professional development – Work with your line manager to undertake continual personal and professional development, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the role and responsibilities. Adhere to organisational policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety. Work with your line manager to access regular clinical supervision, to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present. Review yearly progress and develop clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others. Participate in the delivery of formal education programmes. Demonstrate an understanding of current educational policies relevant to working areas of practice and keep up to date with relevant clinical practice.
19. Research and evaluation – Critically evaluate and review literature. Identify where there is a gap in the evidence base to support practice. Generate evidence suitable for presentations at practice and local level. Apply research evidence base into the workplace.
20. Health and safety / Risk management – Must comply at all times with the Health and Safety policies, in particular following safe working procedures and reporting incidents using the organisation’s Incident Reporting Systems. Comply with the Data Protection Act (2018) and the Access to Health Records Act (1990).
21. Special working conditions – The post holder is required to travel independently between work sites and to attend meetings etc hosted by other agencies. The post‑holder will have contact with body fluids, i.e. wound exudates, urine etc while in clinical practice.
22. Miscellaneous – Work as part of the team to seek feedback, continually improve the service and contribute to business planning. Undertake any tasks consistent with the level of the post and the scope of the role, ensuring that work is delivered in a timely and effective manner. Duties may vary from time to time, without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility. The post‑holder is likely to need to visit patients in their own home.

Person Specification – Experience

• Demonstrable experience as an established foundation‑level pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• Experience and an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long‑term conditions likely to be seen in general practice.
• Demonstrates ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams and community groups.
• Experience of partnership/collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations.

Person Specification – Qualifications

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Demonstrates and understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards of practice.
• Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures relating to performance management.

Person Specification – Desirable

• Holds or working towards an independent prescribing qualification.
• Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy.
• Successful completion of the CPPE General Practice Pharmacist Training Pathway.

Additional Requirements

• Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions.
• Adaptable.
• Evidence of being a great team‑player.
• Self‑motivation.
• Safeguarding and other mandatory training.
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including to visit people in their own homes.

Desirable Additional Attributes

• Immunisation status.

Professional Registration

• Mandatory registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.

Skills and Knowledge

• Demonstrable experience as an established foundation‑level pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• Understanding of the wider determinants of health, including social, economic and environmental factors and their impact on communities.
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing.
• Knowledge of IT systems, including ability to use word processing skills, emails and the internet to create simple plans and reports.
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information.
• Able to 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.
• Able to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol.
• Understand the principles of research governance.

Desirable Skills and Knowledge

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence‑based healthcare.
• Able to plan, manage, monitor and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long‑term conditions.

Additional Information – 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.

Additional Information – UK Registration

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

Employer Details

South and East Leeds GP Group

Hosted employer's address

1st Floor Park Edge Practice

Leeds

West Yorkshire

LS14 1HX

Employer's Website

https://www.seleedsgpgroup.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)