Senior Clinical Pharmacist

Knaresborough & Rural Primary Care Network (PCN) is looking for a motivated and aspirational Clinical Pharmacist team leader to join their well established and experienced pharmacy team. The successful candidate will be responsible for helping to develop medicines optimisation for the PCN, supporting and training a team of clinical pharmacists and technicians and working alongside existing practice employed pharmacists and ICB Medicines Optimisation colleagues. The post holder will be supported by the GPs and the wider clinical team. This is a part time role working 20 hours per week. The post holder would be based across all six practices across the PCN and would be expected to have oversight for the PCN team across all sites. The role is predominately practice based with the option of hybrid working for the right candidate.

Main duties of the job

• To work within their clinical competencies as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide expertise in clinical medicines optimisation across the PCN.
• To lead the pharmacy components of the PCN DES.
• To liaise between PCN Clinical Director, GP partners and key stakeholders to develop and deliver the best service possible to our local population.
• To provide day to day line management of clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians employed in the PCN.
• To identify improvement opportunities and lead on quality improvement and cost saving projects.
• To identify and implement changes related to medication prescribing across the PCN population.
• To support the practice teams to ensure they are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

About us

Yorkshire Health Network (YHN) is a federation of 16 GP Practices across the Harrogate and Rural area. Knaresborough and Rural PCN is 1 of 4 Primary Care Networks that works in collaboration with YHN.

33 days annual leave plus 8 bank holidays (prorated)

Employee Assistance Programme

Long Service Award Scheme

Job responsibilities

• Day to day line management of clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians employed in the PCN.
• Ensuring that the team are managed and supported in their personal and professional development.
• Working within YHN policies and procedures including all aspects of line management, appraisal, absence management, performance reviews and performance management, disciplinary and grievance etc with support from the YHN management team.
• Identify work priorities for team members in conjunction with National, YHN and PCN priorities and with agreement of the clinical staff at the practices.
• Provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation.
• Support and develop the PCN pharmacy team including developing policies and protocols, implementing best practice prescribing, learning, education and training.
• Collaborate with the Clinical Director and PCN practices to ensure seamless operations across the PCN.

Organisational

• Have a leadership role in supporting further integration of general practice with the wider healthcare teams (including community and hospital pharmacy) to help improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage general practice workload.
• Develop relationships and work closely with other pharmacy professionals across PCNs and the wider health and social care system.
• Analyse, interpret, and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
• Prepare performance reports and evaluation against designated KPIs as required.

Clinical

• Take responsibility for the care management of patients with chronic diseases and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex needs.
• Through structured medication reviews, support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste and promote self care.
• Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using their expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas.
• Take a key role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols, and liaison with specialist pharmacists (e.g. mental health, acute hospital specialists), and community pharmacists.
• Provide leadership to pharmacist colleagues in the clinical aspects of medicine reviews, clinical audit, practice research and governance.
• Contribute to reductions in medicine related hospital admissions and readmissions by supporting patients to get the best outcomes from their medicines and identifying and addressing medicines related issues.

Quality Improvement

• Share outcomes of prescribing, clinical, service and patient outcomes audits within the PCN and across the locality in order to drive service and practice improvement.
• Respond to and act on MHRA drug alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.
• Monitor medicines and prescribing expenditure at practice level and propose efficiencies to ensure delivery within budget.
• Provide specialised advice and support in risk management, clinical governance issues and ensure compliance with medicines legislation, patient safety advisory notices and other established good practices to manage and minimise risk.
• Provide specialist expertise in the use of medicines whilst helping to address both the public health and social care needs of patients at the PCNs practice(s) and to help in tackling inequalities.

Person Specification

• Minimum 3 years post registration experience in a hospital or a clinical primary care setting.
• Leadership experience as either manager, team leader or project lead.
• Capacity to be innovative and to develop the role.
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of principles of evidence based healthcare, medicines optimisation and de-prescribing.
• Ability to interpret complex clinical information and data on medicines to deliver face to face clinical care including managing a caseload.
• Completion of the CPPE Pathway.
• Experience with Clinical Systems.

Additional

• Full driving licence and access to transport.

Qualifications

• Vocational Masters degree in Pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent.
• Specialist knowledge through a postgraduate diploma or equivalent.
• Independent prescriber qualification or commitment to be an independent prescriber.

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.

£32,000 a year salary for 20 hours per week.