PCN Clinical Pharmacist in Plymouth

Are you an enthusiastic, experienced Clinical Pharmacist looking to expand your clinical skills further? A new opportunity has arisen for an experienced Clinical Pharmacist to join the Mewstone PCN Team. You will work as part of a multidisciplinary team responsible for providing a comprehensive Medicine service, providing appropriate medicine and prescribing information and advice. This role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies, so requires motivation and passion to deliver an excellent service within general practice. The post holder will be supported to develop their role to become a non-medical prescriber if they do not already hold this qualification.

Main duties of the job

• The clinical pharmacist will provide expertise in clinical medicines management, provide structured medication reviews, manage long term conditions, manage medicines on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, manage repeat prescription authorisation and acute prescription requests.
• As part of the wider team they will address the public health and social care needs of patients in the GP surgeries that make up the PCN.
• The post holder will perform medication reviews for patients with polypharmacy especially for older people, people in care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities.
• The post holder will provide leadership on quality improvement and clinical audit as well as managing some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework.

About us

Mewstone Primary Care Network has a list size of approximately 32,000 patients. The PCN practices are Church View Surgery, Wembury Surgery, Yealm Medical Practice and Dean Cross Surgery, the practices share the same ethos of supportive learning. You will work alongside our GPs, nurse teams, administrators and extended workforce including clinical pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, first contact physiotherapist, mental health practitioner, social prescribing link workers, health & wellbeing coaches and care co-ordinators. We already have an established PCN Prescribing Hub that co-ordinates prescribing support to our practices. All network practices are high achieving practices with a commitment to mentoring and supporting their staff.

Job responsibilities

• Review (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. Respiratory, Cardiovascular and Diabetes).
• Review the on-going 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 GPs and AHPs for medicine improvement.
• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the GP on prescribing and monitoring.
• Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
• Provide patient facing clinics in practices for those with questions and concerns about their medicines.
• Provide telephone advice for patients with questions and concerns about their medicines.
• Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time.
• Contribute pharmaceutical advice to repeat prescribing policy within each practice.
• Develop specialist knowledge and provide specialist clinics in defined clinical areas.

Communication

• Utilise and demonstrate sensitive communication styles, to ensure patients are fully informed and consent to treatment.
• Communicate effectively with and support patients and their families.
• Maintain effective communication within the practice environment and with external stakeholders.
• Participate in practice meetings, case conferences and CPA meetings as required.
• Act as an advocate for patients and colleagues.

Delivering a quality service

• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feed back the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team.
• Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors or subject to shared care.
• Support public health campaigns, and provide specialist knowledge on public health programmes available to the general public.

Personal development

• Work with your lead GP to undertake continual personal and professional development, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the role and responsibilities.
• Take responsibility for own learning and professional growth and for maintaining a record of this within a personal development plan.

Team working

• Understand own role and scope and identify how this may develop over time.
• Work as an effective and responsible team member, supporting others and exploring the mechanisms to develop new ways of working.

Management of risk

• Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches.
• Comply at all times with Health and Safety policy, in particular following safe working procedures and reporting incidents using the organisations Incident Reporting Systems.

Person Specification

• Qualifications
• Completion of an undergraduate degree in pharmacy.
• Up to date registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Attributes
• Self-directed practitioner.
• Highly motivated.
• Flexibility.
• Enthusiasm.
• Team player.
• Experience
• Experience and an awareness of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice.
• Experience of partnership/collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations.