Pharmacist
PCN Clinical Pharmacist 37.5 hours per week. Fixed Term Contract for 6 months. Completed CPPE and IP or working towards an advantage.
Barnard Medical Centre Sidcup DA14 4TA.
Salary dependent on experience.
Job Summary:
Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team (MDT), the job holder will take a lead in driving forward the PCN vision of creating a new wider Community Service, enhancing existing and innovatively developing new care models in a collaborative way across the PCN’s within Bexley.
This role plays a pivotal part in engaging groups of practices to come together and improve the quality of care and operational efficiencies across the local healthcare system, motivating passion to deliver an excellent service within general practice, whilst leading and tailoring the delivery of network priorities and targets with a practice based focus.
Within their professional boundaries, support the development, promotion and implementation of high quality evidence based research that enables the cost effective use of medicines in a way that maximises the benefits of medicines to patients whilst minimises clinical, legal, or financial risks.
Prescribers in this vitally important patient-facing role will proactively shape structured medication reviews, working across the PCN practices ensuring that medicines management processes within these practices are optimised to achieve highly effective, safe, and patient centred prescribing. They will lead the way in supporting patients, where necessary in taking their medicines to get the best from them (especially patients with medication issues and/or those with long term conditions), reducing waste, de-scribing where appropriate and promoting enhanced self-care. Undertaking a very structured programme of training if the job holder hasn’t had experience in primary care.
Offering peer support and facilitating shared learning with other pharmacists in local practices across the networks to support the development of their role and implementing agreed prescribing and pharmaceutical activities or development programmes.
Key Working Relationships
· Patients, service users and their representatives
· Social Prescribers, First Contact Physiotherapists, Physicians Associates and Paramedics
· Community Pharmacists and Support Staff
· Other members of Medicines Optimisation (MO) Teams
· Community Nurses, Pharmacy Technicians, Dieticians, and other Allied Health Professionals (AHPs)
· GP prescribing Leads and Locality Managers
· Hospital Staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisation
· Overall PCN and GP practice workforce
Key Responsibilities
Clinical and Patient Client Care
· Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas.
· Manage care for patients with chronic diseases and undertake clinical medication reviews, with a focus on Hypertension.
· Conduct face-to-face structured medication reviews to:
- optimise patient outcomes
- reduce medication waste
- promote self-care.
· Manage long-term conditions i.e hypertension, mental health with effective medication planning and monitoring.
· Oversee medication management during care transitions, ensuring safe prescribing practices.
· Handle repeat prescription authorisations, reauthorisations, and acute prescription requests.
· Monitor high-risk drugs and conduct clinical audits.
· Independently prescribe medications as part of patient care within your area of competence.
· Manage own case load of patients and deliver services where you are proud to put the patient first with common, minor, self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence.
· Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes from suggestions and recommendations made, including virtual advice for patients with questions, queries, and concerns about their medicines and answers relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other network staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.
· Using structured medication reviews, support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste and promote selfcare.
· Liaises with BHNC colleagues including BHNC pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit.
· 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.
· Work in partnership with hospital colleagues to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care. Reconciles 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.
· On every occasion, produces accurate, contemporaneous, and complete records of patient consultation, consistent with legislation, policies, standards, and procedures.
Leadership and Collaboration
· Support the integration of general practice with wider healthcare teams (e.g., community and hospital pharmacies) to:
- improve patient outcomes
- enhance access to healthcare
- manage general practice workload.
· Build and maintain relationships with pharmacy professionals across Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and the broader health and social care system.
· Provide expert clinical medicines management advice to healthcare professionals and patients.
Supervision and Development
· Participate in a professional clinical network and ongoing clinical supervision
· Seeking guidance if needed with other health care professionals
Financial & Resources
· To be accountable for adhering to the budget, ensuring best value for money, and identifying efficiencies as appropriate, ensuring senior managers are aware of the cost implications of any areas of non-compliance.
· To manage resources required for key duties under this Job Description, ensuring value for money at all times and maintain budget management responsibility allocated to the job holder in line with the scheme of delegation, develop, where required, cost-benefit analysis for spending and initiatives.
· Actively works toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the PCN. To develop and facilitate a good working relationship with community pharmacists and other local providers of healthcare.
· Liaises with colleagues including BHNC, STP,ICS Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians, Heads of Medicines Management,Optimisation to benefit from peer support on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit.
· Foster and maintain strong links with all services across the PCN and neighbouring networks.
· Explores the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such key working relationships with stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients.
Research & Development
· Contributes toward the development and embedding of the BHNC and PCN visions, aims and business objectives.
· Provides advice to projects and business change initiatives regarding prescribing and makes appropriate recommendations to Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.
· Reviews and monitors the on-going need for each patients’ medicine and support them with their medicines ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation).
· Supports public health campaigns, providing specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.
· 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.
· Undertakes clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacists, nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring, and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences, ensuring medicines optimisation at every opportunity.
· Reviews the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews. Putting in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patient groups.
· Be a part of a professional clinical network, having access to appropriate clinical supervision. Appropriate clinical supervision includes:
- each clinical pharmacist must receive a minimum of one supervision session per month by a senior clinical pharmacist
- the senior clinical pharmacist must receive a minimum of one supervision session every three months by a GP clinical supervisor
- each clinical pharmacist will have access to an assigned GP clinical supervisor for support and development
- a ratio of one senior clinical pharmacist to no more than five junior clinical pharmacists, with appropriate peer support and supervision in place.
Policy and Service Development
· Contributes pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).
· Produces and implements a practice repeat prescribing policy and manages the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates; make necessary changes as an independent prescriber, and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.
· Undertakes clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team and supports the delivery of the prescribing safety quality improvement domain.
· Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
· Monitors practice prescribing against the local health economy’s RAG list for medicines and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs). Assists practices in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on each practice’s computer system.
· Audits practices’ compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance and National Skills Framework (NSF).
· Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.
· Work with the general practice teams to ensure the practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
· Attends local, regional and national meetings of relevance some of which will be defined within the national GP pathway for this role supported by Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE).
Professional and Organisational Standards
· Maintains confidentiality at all times.
· Represents the organisation positively and professionally.
· Takes responsibility for own development and revalidation, learning and performance including participating in clinical supervision and acting as a positive role model for others.
· Works within policies regarding family violence, vulnerable children and adults, substance abuse and addictive behaviour, and makes referrals as appropriate for safeguarding.
· Interprets national strategies and policies into local implementation strategies that are aligned to the values and culture of general practice.
· Adheres to and proactively promotes Infection Control standards and complies with Health & Safety, Corporate, Clinical and Information Governance.
· 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).
· 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.
Pay: £48,000.00-£55,000.00 per year
Ability to commute/relocate:
- Sidcup, Greater London: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)
Application question(s):
- Do you have primary care experience and have you completed your CPPE pathway
Work authorisation:
- United Kingdom (required)
Work Location: In person
