Practice Based Clinical Pharmacist in Consett

The post holder will be a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries in general practice. The post holder will form a part of our pharmacist team and work closely together with our clinical team. The post holder will have indemnity cover in place, provided by an appropriate body e.g. PDA (Pharmacy Defence Association) Insurance or equivalent, arrangements to be agreed prior to commencement of role. The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role.

The post holder will be involved in service delivery within the primary care setting. The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescription system, deal with acute prescription requests, and medicines reconciliation on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, providing expertise in clinical medicines advice whilst addressing both public and social care need of the patient in the GP practice.

Main duties of the job include:

• Undertaking clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy.
• Ensuring that the practice integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve patient outcome, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage workload.
• Engaging in development opportunities to improve knowledge and skills with the aim to benefit patient care and increase the skill mix within the wider surgery team.
• Completing ongoing review of professional development with your Clinical Manager and Practice Manager.

About us: Consett Medical Centre is a busy, forward-thinking GP practice serving approximately 16,000 patients in County Durham. We are committed to providing high-quality, patient-centred care through a supportive, multidisciplinary team that includes GPs, Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Practice Nurses, Clinical Pharmacists, Healthcare Assistants, and a dedicated administrative team. We embrace innovation, collaborative working, and continuous service improvement to ensure our patients receive timely and effective care.

Key Responsibilities include:

• Patient facing long-term condition clinics: see patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g., COPD, Asthma), reviewing the ongoing need for each medicine, monitoring needs, and supporting patients to get the best use of their medicines.
• Patient facing clinical medication reviews with patients, actioning appropriate changes and producing recommendations for nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring.
• Patient facing care home medication reviews with patients and carers, working with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration and reduce waste.
• Patient facing domiciliary clinical medication reviews with housebound patients and their carers.
• Management of common, minor and self-limiting ailments within scope of practice, signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
• Telephone medicines support: consultations for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
• Medicine information to practice staff and patients, answering relevant medicine-related enquiries.
• Suggesting and recommending solutions, providing follow-up to monitor the effect of any changes.
• Reviewing medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions, putting in place changes for high-risk patient groups.
• Reconciling medicines following discharge from hospital, intermediate care and care homes, and managing systems for continuity of supply to high-risk groups.
• Repeat prescribing: reviewing the practice Repeat Prescribing Policy, managing the reauthorisation process and ensuring appropriate monitoring is in place.
• Risk stratification: identifying cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through practice computer searches.
• Service development: contributing pharmaceutical advice for new services with medicinal components.
• Information management: analysing, interpreting and presenting medicines data to support decision-making.
• Medicines quality improvement: undertaking clinical audits of prescribing and implementing changes with the practice team.
• Medicines safety: implementing changes resulting from MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and local and national guidance.
• Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations, including monitoring prescribing against the local RAG list and NICE technology assessment guidance.
• Education and training of the primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation, providing professional leadership to the pharmacy team and wider MDT.
• Working with the general practice team to ensure CQC standards are met where medicines are involved.
• Supporting public health campaigns and providing specialist knowledge on public health programmes.

Collaborative Working Relationships:

• Recognises the roles of other colleagues and their role in patient care.
• Demonstrates appropriate communication to gain the co-operation of relevant stakeholders including patients, colleagues, and other NHS and private organisations such as ICBs.
• Demonstrates ability to work as part of a team and recognise personal limitations, referring to more appropriate colleagues when necessary.
• Develops and maintains effective working relationships within and outside the practice and locality, and integrates general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams.
• Liaises with ICB pharmacists and Heads of Medicines Optimisation on prescribing matters to ensure consistency of patient care.

Person Specification:

Essential Experience:

• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare.
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing.
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g., patients).
• Able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions.
• Good IT skills.
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information.
• Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and refers to GPs when appropriate.
• Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines.
• Produce timely and informative reports.
• Gain acceptance for recommendations and influence, motivate and persuade the audience to comply with agreed courses of action where there may be significant barriers.
• Work effectively independently and as a team member.
• Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision.

Desirable Experience:

• Minimum of 2 years post-qualification experience.

Essential Other:

• Self-motivation.
• Adaptable.
• Full Driving Licence.
• Safeguarding adult and children level 3.
• Information Governance toolkit completion.
• Immunisation status.
• Basic Life Support Training.

Essential Qualifications:

• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Master's degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (or equivalent).
• Independent Prescriber or willingness to complete qualification.

Desirable Qualifications:

• Membership of the Royal College of Pharmacy.
• Achievement or working towards Advanced credentialling with the Royal College of Pharmacy.
• Specialist knowledge acquired through post-graduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience.

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.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration.