Lead Pharmacist , Oncology

This role is an exciting opportunity to lead, support, and advance the Oncology pharmacy clinical service, ensuring high-quality pharmacy SACT services across the Chelsea site. The post holder will work in collaboration with the wider pharmacy team, as well as nursing and medical colleagues to streamline and develop the clinical pharmacy service. The post holder will provide an operational service to the Medical Day Unit, as well as NMP support to SACT clinics. This role contributes to the development of the pharmacy workforce to recruit and retain top staff. Candidates should be enthusiastic, proactive, independent, decisive, and highly organised.

Main duties of the job

• Responsible for the co-ordination, delivery, and optimisation of NHS clinical pharmacy Oncology services at the Chelsea site.
• Leading a team of highly skilled pharmacists, technicians and other pharmacy staff working on to deliver cutting edge pharmacy services on site to Oncology patients.
• Leading on the delivery of local, regional and national projects to optimise medication, improve services and outcomes for patients.
• The post holder will work with the senior pharmacy team to identify and deliver cost savings and service efficiencies within departments and across systems.
• To provide a framework for the development and implementation of new models of care and to incorporate utilisation of extended roles for pharmacy staff.
• To lead on pharmaceutical issues relating to medicines optimisation, ensuring adherence to national guidelines and medicines legislation.
• To provide highly specialised pharmaceutical advice and support relating to medicines use to senior medical and nursing staff.

Working for our organisation

The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust is a world-leading cancer centre. Our role is to offer our patients the best cancer care available anywhere in the world, and to continue to make a global contribution to finding better ways of diagnosing and treating cancer. We employ over 4,500 staff in a diverse range of careers including nursing, medical, science, radiography, pharmacy, occupational therapy, finance and administrative services.

At The Royal Marsden, we deal with cancer every day, so we understand how valuable life is. When people entrust their lives to us, they have the right to demand the very best. That’s why the pursuit of excellence lies at the heart of everything we do.

At the heart of the hospital is our dedicated team. We offer a stimulating and dynamic working environment, a wide range of staff benefits, learning and development opportunities and clear career pathways. There are opportunities to work flexibly across a range of areas and specialities and we welcome flexible working requests from point of hire to support employees work-life balance.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Responsible for the co-ordination, delivery and optimisation of clinical pharmacy oncology services at the Chelsea site, to include the provision of services 7 days a week (if required) and out of hours.
• To lead the pharmacy team providing a clinical pharmacy oncology service at the Chelsea site, to include day-to-day oversight of operations, implementation of clear processes for allocating and managing the workforce and skill-mix optimisation.
• To collaborate with the Head of Clinical Services, and Education and Training Lead to develop advanced practice and extended roles, ensuring appropriate support, training and supervision of these roles in practice.
• To contribute to and participate in the planning, development and provision of education and training in relation to medicines as part of the pharmacy department’s education and training strategy.
• Line-manage Specialist Pharmacists within the Oncology team.
• To provide financial information to forecast spend and analyse trends on drug usage and expenditure to finance, budget holders, clinicians and colleagues.
• To identify changes in prescribing practices and new prescribing practices that may impact on the drugs budget and/or patient activity and communicate any perceived impact to the relevant teams and clinical business unit.

Person specification

• Education/Qualifications: GPhC registration, MSc/Diploma Pharmacy Practice or equivalent, Registered non-medical prescriber, RPS membership.
• Experience: Significant experience of working in oncology pharmacy, significant post-registration experience in NHS hospitals, significant experience of leading and managing change projects to improve services and deliver efficiencies, experience of contributing to the delivery of medication governance and medication safety, experience delivering education and training, and providing supervision to support the development of multidisciplinary team.
• Skills/Abilities/Knowledge: Ability to lead a team effectively, ability to work effectively as part of a team, excellent time management and organisational skills, ability to communicate effectively with members of the public and other healthcare professionals.

The Royal Marsden values diversity and is committed to the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority groups. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates, LGBTQ+ candidates and candidates with disabilities.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we are working to create a workplace that enables all staff to reach their full potential.

Flu Vaccination – What We Expect of our Staff: At The Royal Marsden we have an immune-compromised patient population who we must protect as much as we can against the flu virus. It is the expectation of The Royal Marsden that all patient-facing staff have an annual flu vaccination, provided free of charge by the Trust.