Clinical Pharmacist

To provide a comprehensive pharmacy service to patients of the CLICK Primary Care Network.

The post holder will work within their competencies as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide expertise in clinical medicines management, provide face to face structured medication reviews, manage long term conditions, management of medicines on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, manage repeat prescription authorisations and reauthorisation, acute prescription requests, while addressing both the public health and social care needs of patients in the GP practices that make up the Primary Care Network.

The post holder will undertake medication reviews of patients with polypharmacy especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities. The post holder will provide leadership on quality improvement and clinical audit as well as managing some aspects of the Quality and Outcomes Framework and the Primary Care Network Direct Enhanced Service Specifications.

Main duties of the job

1. Patient Facing Clinical Medication Reviews
2. Patient Facing Care Home Medication Reviews
3. Patient Facing Domiciliary Clinical Medication Reviews
4. Risk Stratification
5. Unplanned Hospital Admissions
6. Management of Common, Minor and Self-limiting Ailments
7. Patient Facing Medicines Support
8. Management of Medicines at Discharge from Hospital
9. Medicine Information to Practice Staff and Patients
10. Signposting
11. Repeat Prescribing
12. Service Development
13. Information Management
14. Medicines Quality Improvement
15. Implementation of Local and National Guidelines and Formulary Recommendations
16. Provide Education and Training to Primary Healthcare Team on Therapeutics and Medicines Optimisation
17. Ensure Practices are Compliant with CQC Standards Where Medicines are Involved
18. Support Public Health Campaigns
19. Collaborative Working Arrangements

About us CLICK (Chard, Ilminster and Langport) Primary Care Network (PCN) is located in South Somerset with 5 GP practices and a diverse population spread across town and rural locations. CLICK has a population size of around 50,000 patients.

Currently led under the Clinical Director leadership of Dr Christoph Kollmeier.

The PCN is made up of:

• Langport Surgery
• The Meadows (Ilminster)
• Churchview (Ilminster)

As a PCN we are forward thinking, innovate and driven to deliver the best patient care for our population. This includes health population management, and this role ties in with supporting that and tracking the improvements we can make to patients' lives.

Job Responsibilities Key Relationships:

• The patients, doctors, prescribers and practice teams within the Primary Care Network
• Somerset ICB Practice Support Pharmacists and Medicines Management Team
• Local Community Pharmacists
• Other professionals, other NHS/private organisations e.g. ICB and the general public

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

1. See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. Respiratory, Cardiovascular and Diabetes). Review the ongoing 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 Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.
2. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GPs on prescribing and monitoring.
3. 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.
4. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Manage a caseload of patients with common, minor or self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signpost to community pharmacy and refer to GPs or other healthcare professional where appropriate.
8. Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice. Provide telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
9. Reconcile medicines following discharge from hospital, 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).
10. Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other network 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.
11. 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.
12. Produce and implement a repeat prescribing policy within each PCN practice. 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 rests in place when required.
13. 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).
14. Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
15. Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team. Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
16. Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list and make recommendations for 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. Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.
17. Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
18. Work with general practice teams to ensure practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved. Support public health campaigns. Provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.
19. Participate in the Primary Care Network multi-disciplinary team. Liaise with colleagues including ICB, STP/ICS Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit. Liaise with colleagues including ICB, STP/ICS Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians, Heads of Medicines Management/Optimisation to benefit from peer support. Foster and maintain strong links with all services across the PCN and neighbouring networks. Explore the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships. Liaise with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients, including but not limited to: Patients and their representatives, GPs, nurses and other practice staff, Social prescribers, first contact physiotherapists, physicians associates and paramedics, Community pharmacists and support staff, Other members of the Medicines Management team including Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians and Dieticians, Community nurses and other allied health professionals, Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation.

Professional Development

1. Work with your line manager to undertake continual personal and professional development, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the role and responsibilities.
2. Adhere to organisational policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance and health and safety.
3. Work with your line manager to access regular clinical supervision, to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present.
4. Review yearly progress and develop clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others.
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