Pcn Clinical Pharmacist

Mewstone Pcn; Plymouth; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

Mewstone PCN in Plymouth, United Kingdom, is seeking a Clinical Pharmacist to join the multidisciplinary Medicine service within the PCN. You will provide medicines management, conduct reviews, support safe prescribing, and mentor staff as part of the GP practices network.

The post offers opportunities to develop into a non-medical prescriber and to contribute to public health initiatives. UK registered pharmacists with substantial general practice experience are encouraged to apply; recruitment

Qualifications

• Registered pharmacist with UK GPhC.
• Experience in community or general practice pharmacy.
• Independent prescribing qualification may be held or pursued.

Responsibilities

• Conduct structured medication reviews and optimise medicines.
• Provide clinical medicines management and prescribing advice.
• Support care homes to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
• Deliver patient-facing clinics and telephone advice on medicines.
• Collaborate with GP and AHPs to support safe prescribing and transfers of care.

Skills

Clinical medicines management

Medication reviews

Patient communication

Education

Undergraduate degree in pharmacy

Job description

Job summary

Are you an enthusiastic, experienced Clinical Pharmacist looking to expand your clinical skills further? A new opportunity has arisen for an experienced Clinical Pharmacist to join the Mewstone PCN Team. You will work as part of a multidisciplinary team responsible for providing a comprehensive Medicine service, providing appropriate medicine and prescribing information and advice. This role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies, so requires motivation and passion to deliver an excellent service within general practice. The post holder will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical prescriber if they do not already hold this qualification.

APPLICATIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED VIA RECRUITMENT AGENCIES

Main duties of the job

The clinical pharmacist will provide expertise in clinical medicines management, provide structured medication reviews, manage long term conditions, manage medicines on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, manage repeat prescription authorisation and acute prescription requests. As part of the wider team they will address the public health and social care needs of patients in the GP surgeries that make up the PCN.

About us

Mewstone Primary Care Network has a list size of approximately 32,000 patients. The PCN practices are Church View Surgery, Wembury Surgery, Yealm Medical Practice and Dean Cross Surgery, the practices share the same ethos of supportive learning. You will work alongside our GPs, nurse teams, administrators and extended workforce including clinical pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, first contact physiotherapist, mental health practitioner, social prescribing link workers, health & wellbeing coaches and care co-ordinators. We already have an established PCN Prescribing Hub that co-ordinates prescribing support to our practices. All network practices are high achieving practices with a commitment to mentoring and supporting their staff.

Job responsibilities

Clinical practice

• Review (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. Respiratory, Cardiovascular and Diabetes). Review the on-going need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines taking, ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation). Make appropriate recommendations to GPs and AHPs for medicine improvement.
• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.
• Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration. Undertake clinical medication reviews with care home patients and produce recommendations for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.
• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients at home and produce recommendations for the GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.
• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patient groups.
• Provide patient facing clinics in practices for those with questions and concerns about their medicines.
• Provide telephone advice for patients with questions and concerns about their medicines.
• Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other surgery staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines. Suggesting and recommending solutions. Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
• 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.
• Contribute pharmaceutical advice to repeat prescribing policy within each practice. Support the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.
• 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.
• Develop specialist knowledge and provide specialist clinics in defined clinical areas.

Communication

• Utilise and demonstrate sensitive communication styles, to ensure patients are fully informed and consent to treatment.
• Communicate effectively with and support patients and their families.
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers, recognising the need for alternative methods of communication to overcome different levels of understanding, cultural background and preferred ways of communicating.
• Anticipate barriers to communication and take action to improve communication.
• Maintain effective communication within the practice environment and with external stakeholders.
• Participate in practice meetings, case conferences and CPA meetings as required.
• Act as an advocate for patients and colleagues.
• Ensure awareness of sources of support and guidance and provide information in an acceptable format to all patients, recognising any difficulties and referring where appropriate.
• Communicate effectively and regularly with all team members

Delivering a quality service

• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feed back the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team.
• Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
• Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economys RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs). Assist practices in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on each practices computer system.
• Audit practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.
• Provide bulletins on important prescribing messages.
• Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
• Work with the general practice teams to ensure the practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
• Recognise and work within own competence and professional code of conduct as regulated by the PC.
• Produce accurate, contemporaneous and complete records of patient consultation, consistent with legislation, policies and procedures.
• Prioritise, organise and manage own workload in a manner that maintains and promotes quality.
• Assess effectiveness of own care delivery through self and 360 peer review, benchmarking and formal evaluation.
• In partnership with Practice Managers and GPs ensure the maintenance of quality governance systems in the practice and participation in these.
• Utilise the audit cycle as a means of evaluating the quality of the work of self with lead GP, implementing improvements where required following discussion.
• Support public health campaigns, and provide specialist knowledge on public healthprogrammes available to the general public.
• Support and participate in shared learning across the practice and wider organisation.
• Understand and apply legal issues that support the identification of vulnerable and abused adults, and be aware of statutory vulnerable patients health procedures and local guidance.
• Work within policies regarding family violence, vulnerable adults, substance abuse and addictive behaviour. Provide guidance and support to ensure appropriate referral as appropriate.
• Work with your lead GP to undertake continual personal and professional development, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the role and responsibilities.
• To keep up to date with professional issues that influence practice and share this with the team.
• Demonstrate an understanding of current educational policies relevant to working areas of practice and keep up to date with relevant clinical practice.
• Participate in the delivery of formal education programmes. Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
• Promote and practice evidence based psychological care, embracing new ideas, sharing with colleagues so that patient care is continually evaluated and improved.
• Take responsibility for own learning and professional growth and for maintaining a record of this within a personal development plan.
• Identify own training and development needs.
• Maintain competencies pertinent for role and review annually with lead GP.
• Work with your lead GP to access regular clinical supervision, to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present
• Attend training as agreed by lead GP and attend mandatory training as required.
• Review yearly progress and develop clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by lead GP.
• Adhere to organisational policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety.
• Understand own role and scope and identify how this may develop over time.
• Work as an effective and responsible team member, supporting others and exploring the mechanisms to develop new ways of working.
• Liaise with CCG colleagues including CCG pharmacists as appropriate, on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit.
• Liaise with colleagues on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care.
• Foster and maintain strong links with all services across the PCN and neighbouring networks.
• Participate in team activities that create opportunities to improve patient care.
• Prioritise own workload and ensure effective time-management strategies.
• Discuss, highlight and work with the team to create opportunities to improve patient care.

Management of risk

• Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches. This might include risks that are patient related, medicine related, or both.
• Comply at all times with Health and Safety policy, in particular following safe working procedures and reporting incidents using the organisations Incident Reporting Systems.
• Monitor work areas and practices to ensure they are safe and free from hazards and conform to health, safety and security legislation, policies, procedures and guidelines.
• Comply with the Data Protection Act (2018) and the Access to Health Records Act (1990).
• Manage and assess patient risk within areas of responsibility, ensuring adequate measures are in place to patients.
• Support infection-control measures within the practice according to local and national guidelines.
• Participate in the implementation of local and national strategies that are aligned to the values and culture of general practice.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy
• Up to date 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
• May hold or be working towards an independent prescribing qualification
• Clinical Diploma
• Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions
• Highly motivated
• Flexibility
• Team player
• Ability to work across boundaries
• Ability to participate in Enhanced Access services (evenings and weekends) at an agreed rate of pay
• Access to own transport and ability to travel across the locality on a regular basis, including to visit people in their own homes
• Experience and an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice
• Experience of partnership/collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations
• Experience of working in General Practice and / or PCNs
• Audit
• Research
• Project management
• Home visits

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).

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.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration.

PCN Clinical Pharmacist • Plymouth, United Kingdom