Clinical Pharmacist in Nottingham

The post-holder is a Clinical Pharmacist. The Clinical Pharmacist acts within their professional boundaries, working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice within the wider PCN. They will improve patients' health outcomes and the efficiency of the primary care team by providing direct, accessible and timely medicines and expertise including face-to-face contact with patients. The post-holder will be an integral part of the general practice team, as well as part of a wider pharmacist network and multi-disciplinary team. This includes being a conduit of patients' medicine information into and out of hospitals. They will work to optimise medication issues to improve patient care and safety, and support clinical staff in the management of patients.

As part of their employment, the post-holder will achieve qualifications from an accredited training pathway, including independent prescribing, equipping the Clinical Pharmacist to be able to practise and prescribe safely and effectively in a primary care setting. The supervision and mentorship network will be provided to support the Clinical Pharmacist.

Main duties of the job:

• Work within a multidisciplinary, patient-facing team to clinically assess, treat & prescribe for patients using advanced medicines expertise.
• Manage long-term conditions & complex polypharmacy, elderly, frail, care home residents & those with COPD, asthma, learning disabilities or autism (including STOMP).
• Conduct structured medication reviews, improve adherence, reduce waste, promote self-care & address health inequalities.
• Lead medicines optimisation, antimicrobial stewardship & quality improvement, contribute to QOF, enhanced services & NICE/CQC standards.
• Be a contact for medicines queries, shared care protocols, anticoagulation, high-risk drug monitoring, liaise with community, hospital & specialist pharmacists.
• Deliver clinics, home visits & domiciliary reviews; manage complex caseloads, therapeutic monitoring & repeat prescribing systems.
• Support integration across health & social care, supervise safe storage & disposal of medicines, maintain accurate records, ensure safeguarding compliance & encourage cost-effective prescribing.
• Provide education, audit & research input to improve prescribing quality.
• Support vulnerable patients, those at risk of admission & with substance dependency or severe mental illness.
• Participate in professional networks with structured supervision.
• Contribute to governance, complaints review, mandatory training, appraisal, public health campaigns & service development.
• Undertake additional duties as required by workload & staffing needs.

About us:

We are a small and friendly GP practice located in Long Eaton, with excellent access to Nottingham or Derby or further afield, with junction 25 of the M1 being less than 2 miles away. We are seeking an enthusiastic and highly motivated individual to join our friendly and caring Practice as a Clinical Pharmacist. We pride ourselves on being a well-established training practice providing general medical services for our practice list of 5800 patients. This is a rewarding and varied role for a GP who shares our ethos of providing patient-centred care and is motivated to maintain and improve our high QOF achievement and contribute to the development of the organisational and business aspect of the Practice.

We are a fully computerised Practice, using TPP SystmOne and working towards becoming paper light. We have an integrated nursing team including a Nursing team, Health Care Assistant and an efficient and supportive administration team.

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 for specific disease areas.
• Be a prescriber, or completing training to become a prescriber, and work with and alongside the general practice team.
• Be responsible for the care management of patients with chronic diseases and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy, especially the elderly, people in care homes, those with multiple co-morbidities (in particular frailty, COPD and asthma) 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 organisation and to help in tackling inequalities.
• Provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation (including ensuring prescribers in the practice conserve antibiotics in line with local antimicrobial stewardship guidance) and quality improvement, whilst contributing to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and enhanced services.
• Through structured medication reviews, support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste and promote self-care.
• Have a leadership role in supporting further integration of general practice with the wider healthcare teams (including community and hospital pharmacy) to help to improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help to manage general practice workload.
• Develop relationships and work closely with other pharmacy professionals across 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 difficulties), liaison with community pharmacists, and anticoagulation.
• Be part of a professional clinical network and have access to appropriate clinical supervision.
• Act as the point of contact for all medicine-related matters, establishing positive working relationships.
• Consult patients within defined levels of competence and independently prescribe acute and repeat medication.
• Receive referrals and directed patients from triage services and other clinicians.
• Receive and resolve medicines queries from patients and other staff.
• Provide medication review services for patients in the practice and during domiciliary visits to the local nursing home.
• Manage a caseload of complex patients.
• Manage a therapeutic drug monitoring system and the recall of patients taking high-risk drugs, i.e., anticoagulants, anticonvulsants and DMARDs, etc.
• Deliver long-term condition clinics and home visits, particularly for patients with complicated medication regimes, and prescribe accordingly.
• Provide pharmaceutical consultations to patients with long-term conditions as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team.
• Review medications for newly registered patients.
• Improve patient and carer understanding of confidence in and compliance with their medication.
• Maintain accurate clinical records in conjunction with extant legislation.
• Encourage cost-effective prescribing throughout the organisation.
• Implement and embed a robust repeat prescribing system.
• Provide advice and answer medication-related queries from patients and staff.
• Organise and oversee the organisations medicines optimisation systems, including the repeat prescribing and medication review systems.
• Improve the quality and effectiveness of prescribing through clinical audit and education, to improve performance against NICE standards and clinical and prescribing guidance.
• Develop yourself and the role through participation in clinical supervision, training and service redesign activities.
• Ensure appropriate supervision of safe storage, rotation and disposal of vaccines and drugs. Apply infection-control measures within the practice according to local and national guidelines.
• Provide subject matter expertise on medication monitoring, implementing and embedding a system.
• Support clinicians with the management of patients suffering from drug and alcohol dependencies.
• Actively signpost patients to the correct healthcare professional.
• Manage a caseload of complex patients and potential care institutions and provide advice for the GP management of more complex patients or areas such as addictive behaviours, severe mental illness or end-of-life care.
• Review the latest guidance, ensuring the organisation conforms to NICE, CQC etc.
• Be aware of duties and responsibilities regarding current legislation and adhere to practice policies and procedures on Safeguarding Adults and Safeguarding Children.
• Provide targeted support and proactive reviews for vulnerable, complex patients and those at risk of admission and re-admission to secondary care.
• Handle prescription queries and requests directly.
• Provide proactive leadership on medicines and prescribing systems to the organisation, patients and their carers.
• Support in the delivery of enhanced services and other service requirements on behalf of the organisation.
• Participate in the management of patient complaints when requested to do so, and participate in the identification of any necessary learning brought about through clinical incidents and near-miss events.
• Undertake all mandatory training and induction programmes.
• Contribute to and embrace the spectrum of clinical governance.
• Attend a formal appraisal with your manager at least every 12 months. Once a performance/training objective has been set, progress will be reviewed on a regular basis so that new objectives can be agreed.
• Contribute to public health campaigns (e.g., COVID-19 or flu clinics) through advice or direct care.
• Maintain a clean, tidy, effective working area at all times.

There may be, on occasion, a requirement to carry out other tasks, this will be dependent upon factors such as workload and staffing levels.

Person Specification:

Experience:

• An appreciation of the nature of general practice and the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing.
• Minimum of two years working as a pharmacist demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
• An appreciation of the new NHS landscape, including the relationships between individual practices, PCNs and the commissioners.
• Experience in managing pharmacy services in primary care.
• In-depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare.
• Understanding of the mentorship process.
• Experience of working autonomously.
• Clinical knowledge and skills.
• Ability to communicate complex and sensitive information effectively with people at all levels by telephone, email and face to face.
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing, negotiation and organisational skills with the ability to constructively challenge the views and practices of managers and clinicians.
• Understanding of safeguarding adults and children.
• Ability to promote best practice regarding all pharmaceutical matters.
• Ability to work within own scope of practice and understand when to refer to GPs.
• Ability to record accurate clinical notes.
• Good clinical system IT knowledge.
• Plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long-term conditions.

Qualifications:

• GPC registered pharmacist.
• Proof of relevant professional and educational qualifications, coupled with details of any training.
• To be enrolled in, or have qualified from, an approved 18-month training pathway or equivalent that equips them to be able to practice and prescribe safely and effectively in a primary care setting (for example, the CPPE clinical pharmacist training pathways).
• Hold or be working towards a GPhC independent prescribing qualification.
• Working towards faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Minor ailments certification.
• MUR and repeat dispensing certification.

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.