Prescribing Clinical Pharmacist

The post holder is an independent prescribing Clinical Pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of Pharmacists in General Practice. In this role they will be supported by a GP who will develop, manage, support and mentor them.

Main duties of the job KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

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(s) and undertake clinical medication reviews particularly Structured Medication Reviews (SMR) to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy.

Provide primary support to General Practice Staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescriptions 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(s).

Provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.

KEY REQUIREMENTS

Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council

Minimum of 2 years postqualification experience

About us PICS is the employer for this role. We collaborate with patients and partners to design and deliver clinically robust health and social care solution through Community Services, Out of Hospital Services, GP Practices, and Primary Care Networks. Find out more about us:

Benefits of working for PICS

We offer a comprehensive package which includes:

NHS Pension 2015 Scheme (subject to eligibility)

• Alternative government-based scheme (subject to eligibility)
• Generous annual leave entitlement which references NHS Agenda for Change and recognises previous NHS service, starting 35 days pro rata (inc bank holidays)
• Competitive leave entitlement that includes maternity, paternity and adoption leave, study leave allowance, and sickness provisions
• Access to education and training opportunities, depending on your role (CPPE Pharmacy, NHS England Roadmap for First Contact Practitioners, apprenticeship schemes, support professional development)
• Working in a multi-disciplinary team with support from a wide variety of professionals
• A flexible approach to a work-life balance
• Cycle to work scheme (subject to eligibility)
• Access to Blue Light Card scheme
• All staff events and conferences
• Free parking across many sites
• Personalised induction into the company and job role

Job responsibilities KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• 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 (i.e., 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.
• 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 aliments

• Managing caseload for 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 e.g., pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc.

Repeat prescribing

• Produce and implement 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.
• 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).

Information management

• Analyse, interpret, and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
• Undertake simple audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.
• 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.

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 the general public.

Collaborative working relationships

The post holder will:

Recognise the roles of other colleagues within the organisation and their role to patient care

Demonstrate use of appropriate communication to gain the co-operation of relevant stakeholders (including patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other NHS/private organisations e.g., CCGs)

Demonstrate ability to work as a member of a team

Recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary

Actively work toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the practice and locality

Foster and maintain strong links with all services across locality

Explore the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships

Demonstrate ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams

Liaise with CCG colleagues including CCG Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit

Liaise with CCG pharmacists and Heads of Medicines Management/ Optimisation to benefit from peer support

Liaise with other GP Practices and staff as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to:

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