Pharmacist (Primary Care) - Furnace House Surgery in London

To improve the quality and effectiveness of medicines management within the practice. To provide patient focussed, prudent healthcare. To promote medicines safety and review polypharmacy. To develop the practice pharmacist role, becoming a core member of the practice team working effectively with other health and social care professionals delivering services to patients.

Main duties of the job

• Responsible for developing and managing systematic medication and polypharmacy reviews, which will take into account social and practical issues for the patient as well as clinical elements.
• To provide medicines optimisation in chronic disease management.
• To undertake medicines reconciliation following admission or discharge and patient moving into or out of care homes and those newly registered with the practice, following up medication related issues with the patient or other professionals.
• Review and action appropriate recommendations from Medicines Use Reviews/Discharge Medication reviews.
• To support public health and health promotion activities, including smoking cessation, administration of flu vaccinations and antibiotic campaigns.
• To act as the liaison with Community Pharmacy and Secondary Care.
• To resolve and action medication queries from practice staff and patients related to prescription requests or problems identified through the repeat prescribing service.
• To have direct patient contact, which may include dealing with occasionally distressing or emotional circumstances, including contact with terminally ill patients and their relatives, carers.
• To be accountable for one's own professional actions, in line with local and national guidelines and medicines legislation.
• To support the practice with initiatives i.e. NOAC service and Care Home DES.

About us

Furnace House Surgery is a forward thinking and innovative GP practice driven by passion to put the patient at the centre of everything. As a Practice and as colleagues, we are committed to providing each other with an open, friendly and supportive environment. We are a long established 7 partner practice with interest in training and education, situated in West Wales. We have approximately 14,900 patients. We use the INPS Vision clinical system, and we are looking for someone who will share our commitment to providing excellent healthcare to our patients, and become part of our team.

Job responsibilities

• Responsibility for leading and delivering a specialised pharmacy service to the surgery.
• Responsible for developing and managing systematic medication and polypharmacy reviews, which will take into account social and practical issues for the patient as well as clinical elements.
• To provide medicines optimisation in chronic disease management.
• To develop pharmaceutical care plans for individual patients as appropriate e.g targeting those with frequent admissions/exacerbations/frail elderly etc.
• To undertake medicines reconciliation following admission or discharge and patient moving into or out of care homes and those newly registered with the practice, following up medication related issues with the patient or other professionals.
• Review and action appropriate recommendations from Medicines Use Reviews/Discharge Medication reviews identified by community pharmacists.
• To develop a system to support the treatment of minor ailments.
• To support public health and health promotion activities, including smoking cessation, administration of flu vaccinations and antibiotic campaigns.
• To act as the liaison with Community Pharmacy and Secondary Care.
• To resolve and action medication queries from practice staff and patients related to prescription requests or problems identified through the repeat prescribing service.
• To have direct patient contact, which may include dealing with occasionally distressing emotional circumstances, including contact with terminally ill patients and their relatives, carers.
• To be accountable for one's own professional actions, in line with local and national guidelines and medicines legislation.
• To support the practice with initiatives i.e. NOAC service and Care Home DES.

Improving Medicines Management and Safety

• Responsibility for leading and delivering a specialised pharmacy service to the surgery.
• To review clinical correspondence from secondary care to ensure recommendations to initiate new medicines adhere to the formulary and local guidance and take necessary action where appropriate.
• To deal with highly complex drug or medication related information, including challenging prescribing behaviour not in line with health board or national recommendations.
• To review existing and develop new repeat prescribing policies, including employing mechanisms to reduce medicines waste.
• To lead, develop and undertake clinical audit related to medicines to advise the team on the safe and secure handling of controlled drugs and other medicines, ensuring compliance with medicines legislation.
• To ensure appropriate management of controlled drugs within the practice and to advise the team on the safe and secure handling of controlled drugs and other medicines within the practice, ensuring compliance with medicines legislation.
• To undertake re-authorisations as part of the repeat prescribing system.
• To ensure safe, evidence based and cost-effective prescribing in accordance with national and locally agreed standards and priorities, i.e. implementation of NICE guidelines, All Wales Medicines Strategy Group recommendations and Safety Agency alerts and warnings.
• To target review of medicines known to cause a high number of adverse drug events and admissions i.e. hypnotics, anticoagulants, NSAIDs.
• To develop and implement policies to improve GP practice medicines management services i.e. establish clear recall systems to meet the monitoring requirements of drugs.
• To investigate medicines related incidents to learn and improve practice within a culture of continuous improvement.
• To contribute to the delivery of GMS Quality Outcomes Framework.
• To contribute to/manage relevant enhanced services e.g. shared care drugs/anticoagulation/NOAC/ Care Home DES.
• To make recommendations on prescribing choices.

Education and Communication

• To provide professional and expert advice to GPs, nurses, practice staff and patients on all aspects of drug treatment (doses, monitoring, interactions, side‐effects etc).
• To develop and provide expert clinical advice to clinical meetings, including educational sessions for the practice staff.
• To explore and implement ways to effectively educate and involve patients regarding their medicines.
• To co‐ordinate and develop appropriate and educational material, including producing patient information leaflets and posters and run medicine awareness projects.
• To convey complex therapeutic and clinical information to GPs, practice staff, care providers, community pharmacists, unqualified healthcare workers and patients in a suitable manner and format.
• To support the development of trainee pharmacists.

Partnership Working

• To develop excellent professional links with relevant health and social care colleagues, including community pharmacists, community resource and domiciliary teams, care homes, carers, acute care colleagues etc.
• To network with other practice based pharmacists to share best practices.
• To work closely with health board medicines management teams to ensure awareness of local and national priorities and initiatives.

Person Specification

• Qualifications: Pharmacy Degree, Membership of a professional body, Minimum of 2 years post qualification experience in pharmacy (hospital, primary care or community).
• Additional Criteria: A demonstrable commitment to delivering professional expertise and direct service provision, An understanding, acceptance and adherence to the need for strict confidentiality, Ability to use own judgement, resource and common sense, Ability to work independently and as part of a multi‐skilled team, Pleasant and articulate, Able to work under pressure, Able to work in a changing environment, Be self‐reflective and willing to learn, Ability to self‐motivate, organise and prioritise own workload.
• Experience: Experience of dealing with the public/patients, Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of patients, In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence, Able to analyse complex technical information and present to others, Ability to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions, Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills, Produce timely and informative reports, Experience of primary care, Experience of GP IT systems, Experience of working in a multi‐disciplinary team.

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.