An exciting opportunity has arisen for a motivated and experienced surgical pharmacist to join our dynamic team as the Lead Pharmacist for the Surgical Emergency Unit. In this role, you will lead a team of junior pharmacists, contributing to their development and performance. You will also work closely with the Surgery Directorate Lead Pharmacist to further develop and enhance clinical pharmacy services across the Surgery Directorate.
Based on Level 6 of the John Radcliffe Hospital, the Surgical Emergency Unit includes three inpatient wards, a triage area, and an Ambulatory Unit. You will be a key member of both the surgery directorate pharmacy team and emergency surgery leadership team and MDT, leading on peri-operative medicines management and supporting clinical governance. The post-holder may also be asked to support the elective surgery team at the Churchill Hospital as service needs require.
This post offers fantastic scope to develop your leadership, mentoring and service development skills in a supportive environment, with opportunities to engage in research and innovation. You will also play a vital role in strengthening communication and collaboration between pharmacy and clinical teams.
Lead the development and delivery of high-quality peri-operative and clinical pharmacy services to the Surgical Emergency Unit, whilst supporting wider service development across the Surgery Directorate.
Drive the Trust’s Quality Priority on Medicines Reconciliation at transitions of care, with a focus on pathway development in surgical ambulatory and triage areas.
Collaborate with the Surgery Directorate Lead Pharmacist and the Surgical Emergency leadership team to implement an integrated pharmacy prescribing service, enhancing medicines management and patient flow.
Strengthen partnerships between Pharmacy, Surgery, and Anaesthetics to promote a cohesive and collaborative culture.
Develop and maintain near-patient dispensing services to support patient medicines education, timely discharges, and cost-effective medicines use
Provide line management, support and development for Specialist and Foundation pharmacists within the Surgery Directorate team.
Actively contribute to both the pharmacy and clinical directorate teams, ensuring effective two-way communication to uphold safe and effective medicines use across the Trust.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest NHS teaching trusts in the country. It provides a wide range of general and specialist clinical services and is a base for medical education, training and research. The Trust comprises four hospitals - the John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Headington and the Horton General Hospital in Banbury.
Our values, standards and behaviours define the quality of clinical care we offer and the professional relationships we make with our patients, colleagues and the wider community.
We call this Delivering Compassionate Excellence, and its focus is on our values of compassion, respect, learning, delivery, improvement and excellence.
These values put patients at the heart of what we do and underpin the quality healthcare we would like for ourselves or a member of our family. Watch how we set out to deliver compassionate excellence via the OUH YouTube channel .
In 2023 NHS England launched its first sexual safety charter, and our Trust proudly signed it. We pledge zero tolerance for inappropriate sexual behaviour and commit to the ten core principles
Oxford University Hospital s promotes a safe, respectful hiring environment.
If you want to make a difference with us, come and join our team. Together, we will uphold the highest standards of care and professionalism.
Direct Patient Care
1. Deliver compassionate excellence via a patient focused clinical pharmacy service, in accordance with national medicines optimisation principles and local clinical pharmacy procedures.
2. Analyse prescriptions, alongside technical resources, patient records and information from patient consults to form an opinion on the most appropriate course of action.
3. Accurately and sensitively communicate medicines related information to a variety of healthcare professionals and patients including those with language difficulties, physical or mental disabilities, in a way that facilitates shared decision making.
4. Participate in and promote antimicrobial stewardship, medicines safety, and medicines effectiveness initiatives.
5. Provide highly specialised advice and guidance on patient management in areas where evidence base is lacking or opinions are conflicting.
6. Apply advanced clinical knowledge and skills in the delivery of care for individuals or groups with complex care needs.
7. When registered with the GPhC and the OUH, prescribe within the Trust’s policy for Non-medical Prescribing .
8. Independently manage patients in ambulatory settings, and/or proactively review patients as part of a multidisciplinary ward round.
9. Optimise transfer of patient care, though timely completion of medicines reconciliation and communication with GPs and community pharmacy teams.
10. Support OUH dispensaries, and liaise with external agencies (Such as aseptic production services or homecare providers) to ensure safe, timely and appropriate supply of medications to patients.
Supporting Professional Activities
Leadership and Management
1. Act as a role model for pharmacy within the Trust, demonstrating the GPhC Standards for Pharmacy Professionals, RPS Core Advanced capabilities and our Trust values.
2. Support and promote the Trusts equality, diversity and inclusion principles.
3. Take actions to improve the health of the population and reduce health inequalities.
4. Promote the sustainable use of medicines inline with the Trusts Green Plan
5. Plan and organise your own workload in alignment with professional and organisational priorities. Support others to do the same. Delegate and escalate appropriately.
6. Accept professional accountability for all actions and advice.
7. Line manage designated staff in line with the Trust’s HR policies and procedures, including job planning, annual appraisal and supporting the recruitment, deployment and retention of colleagues
8. Motivate and support individuals to deliver defined objectives and continuously improve performance.
9. Develop, implement and monitor Medicines Management policies and procedures, including MILs, PGDs and injectable monographs related to your area of practice.
10. Represent your service at relevant OUH meetings as appropriate e.g. Home Care User Group, High Cost Medicines Group, Pharmacy Systems Optimisation, Governance,
11. Provide advice to your service on all aspects of medicines management.
12. Promote compliance with medicines legislation and Trust policies and procedures.
13. Report any unexpected or untoward events via the Trusts incident reporting system
14. Investigate medication related incidents and complaints in your service.
15. In appropriate situations deputise for the Directorate Lead Pharmacist/ Consultant Pharmacist, as required
16. Take on any additional specific roles as agreed with the Directorate Lead Pharmacist, in the process of one to ones, appraisal or job planning.
17. Take on any additional specific roles as agreed with Senior Pharmacy Managers, on behalf of the Directorate, Division, or Trust.
Research and Improvement
1. Participate in, support, supervise and lead on Audits, Service evaluation and Quality/Cost Improvement Projects that align to our strategy and support our culture of continuous improvement.
2. Analyse and critically appraise highly complex facts in order to ensure evidence-based practice and accurate financial costings when producing reviews of medicines for formulary applications.
3. Support the supply of medicines for clinical trials.
4. Identify gaps in the evidence base; build own research practice by using appropriate methods for addressing the identified gap(s) and generate new evidence.
5. Implement changes at a team and/or service level based on the outputs of research and/or quality improvement activity and disseminate findings.
Training and Development
1. Complete a local induction programme, including core training and maintain core skills throughout employment.
2. Seek feedback and participate in annual appraisal process.
3. Reflect on practice to critically assess own learning needs and pro-actively engage in professional development.
4. Once meeting the requirements to act as a Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP), fulfil this role to continue to develop pharmacists within your team.
5. Design and delivers educational interventions that impact at a team and/or organisational level, supporting members of the pharmacy team, wider multidisciplinary team, and/or service users, to safely and effectively use medicines.
6. Support colleagues within your team to be aware of practice changes and developments. Encourage expertise in their area of specialist practice, and to share exemplary practice by acting as a resource.
7. Tutor and support trainee foundation pharmacists and technicians, and those completing the postgraduate diploma.
Effort and Environment
1. High levels of concentration may need to be maintained for extended period
2. Potential for frequent interruption and need to reprioritise.
3. The majority of a Pharmacist’s work requires precision and accuracy.
4. Physical effort may be necessary to stand for prolonged periods (up to 5 hours), move between departments, lifting & handling equipment or medicines.
5. Emotional effort – Effort may be required to maintain a calm and compassionate disposition when dealing with distressed patients or relatives.
6. There is potential for exposure to cytotoxic or cytostatic medicines and bodily fluids.
General Conditions
Risk Management
The management of risk is the responsibility of everyone and will be achieved within a progressive, honest and open environment.
Staff will be provided with the necessary education, training and support to enable them to meet this responsibility.
Staff should be familiar with the
- Major Incident Policy
- Fire Policy
- Information governance
and should make themselves familiar with the ‘local response’ plan and their role within that response.
Responsibilities for Health and Safety
The post holder is responsible for ensuring that all duties and responsibilities of this post are carried out in compliance with the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, Statutory Regulations and Trust Policies and Procedures. This will be supported by the provision of training and specialist advice where required.
Infection Control
Infection Control is everyone’s responsibility. All staff, both clinical and non-clinical, are required to adhere to the Trusts’ Infection Prevention and Control Policies and make every effort to maintain high standards of infection control at all times thereby reducing the burden of Healthcare Associated Infections including MRSA.
All staff employed by OUH have the following key responsibilities:
- Staff must wash their hands or use alcohol gel on entry and exit from all clinical areas and/or between each patient contact.
- Staff members have a duty to attend mandatory infection control training provided for them by the Trust.
- Staff members who develop an infection (other than common colds and illness) that may be transmittable to patients have a duty to contact Occupational Health.
Child Protection
The post holder will endeavour at all times to uphold the rights of children and young people in accordance with the UN Convention Rights of the Child.
Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults
The Trust is committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults throughout the organisation. As a member of the trust there is a duty to assist in protecting patients and their families from any form of harm when they are vulnerable.
Information Governance
All staff must complete annual information governance training. If you have a Trust email account this can be completed on-line, otherwise you must attend a classroom session. For further details, go to the Information Governance intranet site.
Data Quality
Data quality is a vital element of every member of staff’s job role. Oxford University Hospitals recognises the importance of information in the provision of patient care and in reporting on its performance. Data quality is therefore crucial in ensuring complete, timely and accurate information is available in support of patient care, clinical governance, performance management, service planning, and financial and resource planning and performance.
All staff should ensure that they have read and understood the Trust’s Data Quality Policy.
