Clinical Pharmacist with Independent Prescribing

Job summary
Please note we reserve the right to close the vacancy before the closing date if there are a high number of applicants received.

The post holder is a clinical pharmacist with independent prescribing, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice. In this role they will be supported by a senior clinical pharmacist who will develop, manage and mentor them.

Main duties of the job
The post holder is a clinical pharmacist, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice. They will be supported by a senior clinical pharmacist who will develop, manage and mentor them.

The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role. The post holder will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy. The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescription system, deal 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 practice. The post holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.

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.

About us
Primary care is changing; both the way we interact with patients and the local structures. It is an exciting and dynamic time to work within General Practice. In Walsall, networks of local GP practices have formed seven Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to help improve the care offered to the local population and develop new ways of working.

Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting programme of transformation to develop a new model of care which addresses our ambition to deliver person-centred, coordinated care across the district. The Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice model is supported by the direction of national policy including the Five Year Forward View and GP Forward View where there is a need to better utilise the role of pharmacy within primary care to pro-actively help patients stay safe and well and out of hospital, as well as helping to reduce the demands on general practice.

Job responsibilities
Primary Duties and Areas of Responsibility

Prescription queries / repeat prescribing

• Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy and support colleagues by reducing prescription queries.
• 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.

Patient facing long term condition clinics

• See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma).
• 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 (ie. medicines optimisation). Make appropriate recommendations to Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.

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.

Patient facing care home medication reviews

• Undertake 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.

Patient facing domiciliary clinical medication review

• Undertake 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.

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.
• Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

Patient facing medicines support

• Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice

Telephone medicines support

• Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

• Answers all 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.

Unplanned hospital admissions

• 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.

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 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).

Signposting

• Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time eg. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews, etc.

Risk stratification

• 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.

Service development

• Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (eg. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).

Information management

• Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision-making.

Medicines Quality Improvement programmes

• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Medicines safety

• Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.

Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

• 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 the practices computer system.
• Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.
• Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

Education and Training

• Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
• Provide training to visiting medical, nursing, pharmacy and other healthcare students where appropriate.

Care Quality Commission

• Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

Public health

• To support public health campaigns.
• To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to general public.

Person Specification
Qualifications

• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Minimum of 2 years experience as a pharmacist, demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• Have experience and an awareness of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice.
• Holds independent prescribing qualification.
• Recognises 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.
• Involves patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidelines.
• GPhC membership required
• NB: it is anticipated level of qualification held may vary according to the level of position and the components of the role being carried out, see person specification for details.

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. For further information please see NHS Careers website.