PCN Clinical Pharmacist- Hackney Downs PCN

The Hackney Downs PCN in City and Hackney is seeking to recruit an experienced PCN Clinical Pharmacist to develop and support medicines optimisation work within the GP practices in the PCN covering a population of approximately 40,000. The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role. The PCN Clinical Pharmacist will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management and work proactively with other healthcare professionals as part of a multidisciplinary team across the PCN.

Main duties of the job

• The successful candidate will join a core Pharmacy Team and will be supported by a Senior Clinical Pharmacist and a GP Supervisor.
• Will have another pharmacist with experience already working in practice to support.
• Will have support via monthly group meetings with senior pharmacist.

The PCN Clinical Pharmacist will need to be committed to improving health and putting patients first. Key qualities will be the ability to build relationships and work collaboratively with the practice team and build rapport with patients. Demonstrable general pharmaceutical skills and knowledge in core areas, including long term conditions, together with a good understanding of general practice are essential.

Job responsibilities

• Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using their expert knowledge of medicines to support the management of acute and long-term conditions.
• Be a prescriber, or completing training to become a prescriber, and work with and alongside the general practice team.
• Be responsible for the management of patients with long term conditions and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy, especially the elderly and those with multiple co-morbidities (in particular frailty, COPD, asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular disease) and people with learning disabilities or autism (through STOMP Stop Over Medication Programme).
• Provide specialist expertise in the use of medicines whilst helping to address both the public health and social care needs of patients at the PCN's practice(s) and to help in tackling inequalities.
• Provide leadership in the practice on medicines optimisation systems and processes and quality improvement.
• Contribute to meeting the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF) targets, enhanced services and the Investment and Impact Fund (IIF) indicators through Structured Medication Reviews (SMRs), support to improve the patients' knowledge of their conditions and associated treatments and therefore improve adherence to medication, reduce waste and promote self-care.
• Have a lead role in supporting integration of general practice with the wider healthcare teams (including community and hospital pharmacy) as part of the pharmacy integration agenda to help improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage general practice workload.
• Build relationships and work closely with other pharmacy professionals across PCNs and the wider health and social care system.
• Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols, clinical research with medicines, liaison with specialist pharmacists (including mental health and reduction of inappropriate antipsychotic use in people with learning disabilities).

Key aspects of PCN pharmacist role

• Patient facing role undertaking face to face medications reviews for patients with long term conditions on polypharmacy, housebound patients, chronic disease management areas identified as a priority area within the PCN.
• Review patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required.
• Review ongoing need for each medicine, assess monitoring requirements and support patients to ensure treatment is safe, appropriate and optimised for maximum clinical benefit.
• Discuss recommendations and outcomes with relevant members of the PCN team and provide appropriate and timely follow up.
• Support patients to optimise medicines by providing additional written patient information leaflets, and liaise with community pharmacists about the need for special requirements to aid adherence.
• Support practices in improving patient access for minor ailments and acute presentations.
• Promote the importance of self-care and signpost patients to community pharmacy led services e.g. hypertension case finding, new medicines service etc.

Medicines Information to Practice Staff and Patients

• Support resolution of medicines queries from the practice team, PCN team, community pharmacists and patients.
• Provide medicines optimisation updates at clinical meetings to inform and improve prescribing within the practice.
• Analyse, interpret and present relevant prescribing data, including audit findings, to practice staff regularly to highlight prescribing issues.
• Communicate recommended actions relating to medication and medical device safety alerts.
• 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 resolve medication issues upon discharge to ensure a seamless transfer of care for the patient.

Commissioned improvements for QIPP and medicines optimisation

• Support the practice and the PCN in delivering the outcomes as required in the medicines section of the Clinical Commissioning Contract.

Signposting

• Be fully aware of the vast array of services available to support patients and signpost patients and refer appropriately e.g. social prescriber, specialist referral etc.

Repeat Prescribing

• Review, implement and support adherence to the practice repeat prescribing policy.
• Manage the repeat prescribing area authorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions, flagging up those patients needing a review.
• Ensure patients on repeat prescriptions have the required monitoring and assessments undertaken as appropriate to their condition(s) and medicines prescribed.

Clinical Governance

• Communicate, action and support implementation of MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and other local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations.
• Undertake clinical audits in priority areas identified by the Medicines Optimisation Team or within the PCN and feedback results to practices and the PCN and support them in implementing recommendations.
• Support practices and PCNs in identifying and reporting onto NRLS any incidents relating to medicines. Be involved in investigating medicines incidents and identifying and implementing any required system improvements.
• Support implementation of shared care protocols in practice, including processes to improve monitoring of high-risk drugs.
• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews.
• Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through computer searches.
• Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

Education and Training

• Contribute to the provision of education and training on medicines optimisation and specific therapeutic areas to healthcare professionals within the PCN and to the wider ICB geography, including the PCN pharmacy professional network meetings.

Public Health

• To support public health campaigns.
• To provide specialist advice on all public health programmes available to the general public.

General

• Undertake any other work supporting medicines optimisation in GP practices and the PCN commensurate with the banding of the post and which is agreed between the post holder and the manager.

Key Collaborative Working Relationships

The post-holder will be required to work with a wide range of stakeholders. It is important that the post holder recognises the roles of other colleagues to person-centred care, and liaises with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients including:

• Patients and Patient Participation Groups (PPGs).
• GPs, nurses and other practice staff.
• Other healthcare professionals including pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social care teams, dieticians etc.
• Locality / GP prescribing lead and Locality managers.
• Community nurses and other allied health professionals.
• Ability to work as a member of a team within the PCN.
• Collaboration with network resources to support care management plans and social prescribing.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required

• Has experience/awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in a general medical practice.
• Minimum of 2 years post graduate experience in pharmacy, as demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• Holds an independent prescribing qualification, is working towards a qualification or has the intention to complete this in the future.
• Demonstrates an understanding of the role of a clinical pharmacist within primary care and where it fits into and how it complements the practice team and the wider PCN team.
• Accountable for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.
• Able to follow legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct.

Health and Safety/Risk Management

An expectation is for all staff to have a commitment to promoting and maintaining a safe and healthy environment and be responsible for their own and others welfare. In addition, staff will be expected to undertake the statutory mandatory health and safety training and other training relevant to their specialist area of work.

Equality and Diversity

The post-holder must co-operate with all policies and procedures designed to ensure equality of employment and complete the required statutory mandatory training. The post-holder should respect patient confidentiality at all times and not divulge patient information unless sanctioned by the requirements of the role.

In view of the nature of the role, this job description is intended to provide an outline of the duties and responsibilities; it will be subject to review and amendment as necessary in consultation with the post holder.

Person Specification

• Qualifications: Registered as a pharmacist with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Experience: Minimum of 2 years post-qualification experience.
• Disclosure and Barring Service Check: This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.