An opportunity has arisen to join the clinical pharmacy team at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, working primarily with the Lewisham Community Mental Health Teams.
Pharmacy is an integral part of Lewisham’s developing community mental health services, and this Band 7 role offers the opportunity to work directly with service users and multidisciplinary teams to improve medicines use, continuity of care and outcomes closer to home.
You will be a key clinical pharmacy contact for allocated community mental health teams, providing patient-facing consultations, specialist advice on psychotropic medicines and practical support to improve monitoring, adherence and shared decision-making. You will work across organisational boundaries with primary care, community pharmacies, acute hospitals, inpatient wards and crisis services.
We are looking for a pharmacist with relevant mental health experience, sound clinical judgement and the confidence to manage an autonomous workload while contributing to a multidisciplinary team. Experience of primary care or community mental health services is desirable, but a clear commitment to developing in this area is essential.
You will join a supportive Lewisham pharmacy team, receive regular professional supervision and have access to development opportunities in mental health pharmacy, independent prescribing, quality improvement, teaching and research.
You will provide a specialist clinical pharmacy service to allocated Lewisham Community Mental Health Teams, working closely with prescribers, care coordinators, nurses and other multidisciplinary colleagues.
Your work will include reviewing complex medication regimens; advising on the initiation, adjustment and discontinuation of medicines; undertaking consultations with service users and carers; supporting the monitoring of high-risk psychotropic medicines and physical health; and addressing practical problems that may prevent people from gaining the best outcomes from treatment.
You will support safe transfers of care between community teams, primary care, community pharmacies, acute hospitals, inpatient wards and crisis services. You will also contribute to medicines safety, staff training, audit, quality improvement and the collection of meaningful patient and service outcome data.
If you are qualified as an independent prescriber, you will prescribe within your competence and agreed management plans.
The post includes regular travel between the Ladywell Unit and community team bases across Lewisham. You may also contribute to inpatient or dispensary services and participate in the pharmacy on-call, late-duty, weekend or bank-holiday services where applicable.
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust provides a wide range of local and specialist mental health services. We work closely with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London and are part of King’s Health Partners.
Our pharmacy department provides clinical and dispensing services across inpatient and community settings. The department has nationally and internationally recognised expertise in psychotropic medicines, specialist medicines information, education, research and clinical trials, and contributes to the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines in Psychiatry . We are the world's leading pharmacy centre for research in psychiatry, having published over 300 clinical papers in the past 25 years.
You will join the Lewisham pharmacy team, based at the Ladywell Unit on the University Hospital Lewisham site, and work with community mental health teams across the borough. The team supports a diverse local population and works closely with inpatient, crisis, primary care, community pharmacy and acute hospital services.
The Ladywell Unit is close to Lewisham town centre and has good rail and bus connections.
We offer regular supervision, a strong programme of professional development and opportunities to contribute to teaching, quality improvement, research and service innovation.
To provide a specialist clinical pharmacy service to allocated SLaM community mental health teams and, where required, home treatment teams
To work as an integral member of the multidisciplinary team, providing evidence-based advice on complex medicines-related issues, including drug interactions, high-dose antipsychotic treatment, unlicensed medicines and areas where the evidence base is limited.
To support safe transfers of care by liaising with primary care, community pharmacies, acute hospitals, inpatient wards, home treatment teams and other relevant services.
To have medicines related consultations with patients and carers; involve patients in treatment decisions; improve patient and carer satisfaction with information they receive about medicines
To improve physical health outcomes for community mental health patients, for example by participating in vaccination programmes, physical health clinics and physical health monitoring programmes
To support the community teams to use medicines safely and effectively and reduce medicines wastage
To implement medicines optimisation and quality improvement programmes in the teams
To provide medicines related training to community mental health team staff and other members of the pharmacy team
To prescribe medicines to service users within competence and agreed management plans
To participate in the inpatient or dispensary service on a rotational basis where required to by the site lead pharmacist
To record clinical interventions, patient outcomes and relevant service data to demonstrate the impact of the pharmacy service and inform medicines safety and service improvement
