General Practice Clinical Pharmacist

We are looking for an enthusiastic clinical pharmacist, preferably with an independent prescribing qualification, to join our friendly practice, including our excellent team of 6 clinical pharmacists and extensive practice multidisciplinary team. We are an innovative and forward-looking practice of 18,300+ patients, working in modern and well-equipped premises. We believe in retaining the traditional values of general practice, including a strong patient-centred ethos, while embracing innovation and technology to provide a general practice fit for the future.

We embrace skill-mix with an extensive team, including GPs, pharmacists, advanced nurse practitioners, practice nurses, first contact physiotherapists, mental health practitioners, physician associates, paramedics, social prescribing link workers and health care assistants. We are a training practice (GP registrars and medical students) and provide weekly teaching and real-time supervision and mentoring to our pharmacists, nurses and other healthcare professionals. We support the professional development of our team and have extensively developed and expanded the role of our clinical pharmacists through our training and supervision initiatives. We are an integral member of our Primary Care Network and our Senior Partner is the Clinical Director.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will work alongside other clinicians in a patient-facing role. They will be able to work independently, though we also provide clinical supervision and debriefs and regular weekly clinical teaching. The post holder will provide primary support to practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will manage 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 for patients and the practice. They will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management, share with other pharmacists in managing the practice's repeat prescribing process and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients including those with complex polypharmacy. They will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation, quality improvement and be responsible for supporting the practice in implementing effective medicine management, including doing searches and audits, identifying areas for improvement, initiating and managing change. They will maintain a good knowledge of QOF, enhanced services and other parts of the GP Contract, CQC clinical regulatory standards, IIF and other areas.

The postholder will be required to both work as part of the practice multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role, but also provide individual clinical decision making around their own caseload of patients.

About us

We are an established GP practice in Stanmore, for over 80 years. The practice underwent a rebuild into bespoke modern current premises in 2019, with fully-fitted consulting rooms, air-conditioning throughout and a lift between the ground and first floor. We serve a growing list size of over 18,300 patients, comprising a diverse multi-ethnic population with about 66% of Asian origin. The practice is also the lead practice for Harrow East Primary Care Network and one of our Senior Partners is Clinical Director. The practice is an established training practice, training GP registrars and medical students. We also run extensive in-house teaching, mentoring and supervision for our extended clinical workforce, including weekly pharmacist teaching sessions. We also avail of the extensive learning opportunities from our local training hub.

We use EMIS Web as our clinical system, and Docman for document management of hospital correspondence and AccuRx for text messaging. We use ARDENS templates and searches and PATCHs as our online consultation platform.

Our philosophy

Our aim is to retain the values of traditional general practice, within a modern context. We believe in availing the opportunities of the use of technology and digital tools, to maximise productivity and efficiencies and also empower patients, while at the same time providing holistic, personalised continuity of care.

Job responsibilities

Working alongside our team of clinical pharmacists, the postholder will have a pivotal role within the primary care team contributing to the quality of care and operational efficiencies of our large, modern, GP training practice, with a passion to deliver excellent service, within their professional boundaries. They will maintain a good knowledge of QOF, enhanced services and other parts of the GP Contract, CQC clinical regulatory standards, IIF and other areas. The postholder will be required to both work as part of the practice multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role, but also provide individual clinical decision making around their own caseload of patients.

Job Responsibilities

• Repeat prescribing: Work as part of the pharmacist team to lead the repeat prescribing system and medication review policy. Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and addressing those needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.
• Medicine information to practice staff and patients: Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines. Conduct telephone, face-to-face, virtual and domiciliary (where appropriate) clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients including those with complex polypharmacy. Review the ongoing need for each medication, ensuring monitoring needs are performed and an opportunity to support patients achieve better health outcomes. Reduce inappropriate poly-pharmacy and wasteful prescribing and make appropriate recommendations. Ensure drug monitoring robust systems are in place for drug monitoring at each practice, streamlining these where possible. Develop and implement ways to improve monitoring of high-risk medication such as anticoagulants, anticonvulsants, and DMARDs, etc. Monitor practice prescribing against local guidelines and formulary recommendations.
• Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches.
• Telephone medicines support: Provide telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
• Patient facing medicines support: Provide patient facing and/or virtual appointments or clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice.
• Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments: Managing patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
• Unplanned hospital admissions: Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-risk patient groups.
• Management of medicines on discharge from hospital: To 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. Set up and manage systems to ensure continuity of medicines supply to high risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).
• Signposting: Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc.
• Medicines safety & quality improvement: Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance. Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.
• Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations: Monitor practice prescribing against ICB formulary and medicines optimisation recommendations as appropriate and make recommendations to GPs for appropriate prescribing, e.g. to not prescribe red list drugs, or appropriate arrangements for prescribing under shared care agreements.
• Patient facing clinical medication review: Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring. For patients with long-term condition 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). Consult patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma). Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients in Care Homes. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration. Undertake clinical medication reviews with housebound patients and those requiring domiciliary visits. Produce recommendations for nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.
• Patient facing care long term condition management: This will be dependent on training and competence. We provide weekly clinical teaching for our pharmacist team by one of our GP partners. We also avail of training opportunities provided by our training hub. Examples of competences you may have or develop include: Diabetes care, non-diabetic hyperglycaemia, Asthma, COPD, Dementia reviews and others.
• Education and Training: Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.
• Care Quality Commission: Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
• Public health: To support public health campaigns. To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.

Person Specification

• Qualifications: Masters Degree in Pharmacy (MPharm). Registered member of the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) with no restrictions to practice.
• Experience: Postgraduate experience in community or hospital pharmacy or general practice. Experience in long term condition management. Experience in medicines management systems. Experience of working in a GP practice or PCN. Experience in consulting independently.
• 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.