Job description

Job responsibilities

The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists and support staff in general practice. The pharmacist works as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a multi-faceted role with elements of patient-facing and organisational based work. The pharmacist aids PCN member practices in areas of chronic disease management within the practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy. The pharmacist provides primary support to general practices within the PCN with regards to prescription and medication queries. They may involve supporting with the repeat prescription system, dealing with acute prescription requests, 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 practices.The pharmacist provides clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manages some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services. The pharmacist will ensure that the PCN 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 pharmacist is enrolled onto the CPPE Pharmacists in General Practice education course to help develop the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to work in general practice as part of a multidisciplinary team in a patient-facing role. In addition the pharmacist will be supported to develop their role in becoming a non-medical prescriber.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Masters degree in Pharmacy Mandatory registration with GPHC

Desirable

• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical society Specialist knowledge acquired through post graduate diploma level or equivalent.
• Independent Prescriber

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 2 years post qualification experience.
• 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 Is able to plan, manage,monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• Good IT skills Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information
• Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate
• Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines
• 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 Work effectively independently and as a team member Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.

Desirable

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare.
• Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g. patients)
• Produce timely and informative reports

Other

Essential

• Self-Motivation
• Adaptable
• Full Driving Licence
• In date CRB
• Safeguarding adult and children level three
• Information Governance toolkit completion
• Immunisation status
• Basic life support training

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).

Job description

Job responsibilities

The pharmacist will provide direct line management for up to 5 clinical Pharmacists within their PCN, in addition to the number of pharmacy technicians within the PCN.

The additional responsibilities of a PCN Senior Clinical Pharmacist to the PCN Clinical Pharmacist role would include:

• Providing a minimum of one formal clinical supervision session per PCN pharmacist per month
• Monthly one-to-one meeting with each PCN pharmacist (Max of 5) and Pharmacy Technicians
• Responsibility for each PCN pharmacists training and development
• Planning and implementation of new staff inductions
• Provide the first line of support for queries/issues
• Responsible for rota management and absence requests
• Attending PCN meetings where necessary on behalf of the pharmacy team

• Patient facing long-term condition clinics
• Patient facing clinical medication reviews
• Patient facing care home medication reviews
• Risk stratification of high risk drugs/patients
• Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments
• Telephone medicines support
• Management of medicines at discharge from hospital
• Medicine information to practice staff and patients
• Repeat prescribing and repeat dispensing
• Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations
• Provide highly specialist advice and recommendations to other healthcare professionals in writing by person or telephone
• Undertake prescription screening, medication review, patient drug history taking, counselling and specialist drug ordering
• Prescribing where appropriate in areas of suitable clinical competence

The Senior Pharmacist is responsible and accountable for:

• Reviewing the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines, ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation). Make appropriate recommendations to other clinical pharmacists GPs for medicine improvement.
• Undertaking clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
• Undertaking clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacist, nurses or GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
• Undertaking clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacists, nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences
• Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate
• Providing patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice
• Providing a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
• Answering relevant medicine–related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines. Suggesting and recommending solutions. Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes
• Reviewing 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.
• Reconciling 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. 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).
• Ensuring 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
• Reviewing, amending and implementing a practice repeat prescribing policy. Manage 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.
• Identification of 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.
• Contributing pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).
• Using interpreting and presenting medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision-making.
• Undertaking clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs or on behalf of the Federation, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.
• Implementing changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
• Assisting ICB colleagues to 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 and ICB colleagues in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system. Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Cascade and provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages
• Providing education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
• Working with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
• Supporting public health campaigns. To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (or equivalent)
• Independent prescriber or working towards.

Desirable

• Specialist knowledge acquired through post- graduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.
• Previous team lead responsibility

Other

Essential

• Self-Motivation
• Adaptable
• Full driving licence
• In date CRB
• Safeguarding adult and children level three training
• Immunisation status
• Basic life support training

Professional Registration

Essential

• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council

Desirable

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

Experience

Essential

• Minimum of 5 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
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g. patients)
• Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation

Desirable

• Previous management experience
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing

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).