Clinical Pharmacist

The Clinical Pharmacist will play a key role within the GP surgery, working as part of a multidisciplinary team to optimise medicines use, improve patient outcomes, and support safe, effective prescribing. The postholder will provide expert clinical advice on medicines, undertake structured medication reviews, and contribute to the management of long-term conditions. They will be involved in reviewing complex polypharmacy, addressing medication-related queries, and ensuring high-quality, evidence-based prescribing. The role includes responsibility for reducing medicines-related harm and supporting patients to get the best from their treatment through personalised care and shared decision-making. The pharmacist will also contribute to wider practice priorities such as QOF, IIF, medicines safety audits, and implementation of NICE guidance. They will work closely with the pharmacy team, community pharmacy, and secondary care to ensure seamless medicines management across the patient pathway. This role is essential in enhancing access to clinical support, reducing GP workload, and delivering high quality, patient-centred care within the surgery.

Main duties of the job

• Clinical pharmacists work within multidisciplinary teams in patient-facing roles, using their expert medicines knowledge to assess and treat patients in defined disease areas.
• They are prescribers or training to prescribe, supporting general practice by managing patients with chronic conditions and conducting clinical medication reviews, particularly for those with complex polypharmacy, frailty, COPD, CVD and diabetes.
• They provide specialist expertise in medicines use, support public health and social care needs, and help reduce health inequalities.
• They lead on person-centred medicines optimisation, antimicrobial stewardship, and quality improvement, contributing to QOF and enhanced services.
• Through structured medication reviews, they help patients use medicines effectively, reduce waste and promote self-care.
• Clinical pharmacists also support integration between general practice and wider healthcare teams, improving outcomes, access and workload management.
• They build strong relationships across PCNs and the wider health and social care system.
• They play a central role in shared care protocols, medicines related research, liaison with specialist and community pharmacists.
• You will be expected to work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

About us

We are a practice based in leafy Buckinghamshire with approximately 11,000 patients. We have a great team which includes 2 GP Partners, 1 salaried and 3 locum GPs. They are supported by 3 Physicians Associates, 1 Advanced Nurse Practitioner, 1 First Contact Practitioner, 4 Practice Nurses and 2 Healthcare assistants. We also have 3 in-house pharmacists, 1 Social Prescriber and an admin team of 12 staff members.

Job responsibilities

• See where appropriate patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required e.g. COPD, asthma.
• Review the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines taking ensuring they get the best use of their medicines i.e. medicines optimisation.
• Make appropriate recommendations to Senior Pharmacists or GPs for quality improvement.
• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.
• Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
• Manage caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence.
• Provide patient facing clinics for those with medicines queries.
• Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
• Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams e.g. community pharmacy and patients with queries about medicines.
• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews.
• 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 ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge.
• Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy.
• Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review.
• Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches.
• Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
• Support public health campaigns.

Person Specification

• Professional approach to work demonstrating excellent interactive patient skills.
• Ability to gain the confidence and credibility of a range of professionals.
• Able to work under pressure and prioritise tasks to ensure urgent work is completed on time.
• Able to communicate effectively and engage with individuals from other agencies, including patients and the public.
• Capacity to be innovative and develop the role of a practice pharmacist.
• Knowledge of medicines management issues across primary, acute and domiciliary care settings including strategies for the improvement of prescribing.
• Understanding of the principles of clinical governance and how these apply in the broader arena.
• Masters Degree in Pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent.
• Registered with GPhC.
• Evidence of recent and relevant Continuing Professional Development.
• Independent prescriber status or a commitment to undertake the course.
• At least 2 years post registration experience in a hospital, community or general practice setting.