Job summary
We are looking for a Clinical Pharmacist to work for 24 - 32 hours per week, who will be responsible for a combination of patient facing work and telephone including medication reviews, chronic disease management, prescription queries and management of medicines through transfer of care. The successful candidate will also play a significant role in service and quality improvement through audits, sharing of best practice and current guidance with regards to prescribing and through work in medicines optimisation.

Main duties of the job

• The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role. The post holder will take responsibility for areas of chronic disease management within the practice and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy.
• The post holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support 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 advice while addressing both public and social care needs of patient in the GP practice.
• The post holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement and manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.
• The post holder will ensure that the practice integrates with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage workload. The role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies so requires motivation and passion to deliver excellent service within general practice.

About us
We are a large, well respected, stable Practice operating across two sites in Potton and Gamlingay. We are a very hard working team with a commitment to providing high quality clinical care to our patients.

• Patient list size 13,000
• Eight GP Partners, two salaried GPs
• Rural market town and village locations
• Part-dispensing
• Member of Sandhills Primary Care Network
• Free parking, easy commute
• Positive CQC report
• Cambridge Medical Student training Practice
• SystmOne computer system
• NHS pension scheme

Job responsibilities
Primary Duties and Areas of Responsibility
Patient facing Long-term condition Clinics
See patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma). 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 for medicine improvement.

Patient facing Clinical medication reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.

Patient facing care home medication reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

Patient facing medicines support
Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice.

Telephone medicines support
Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients
Answers relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines. Suggesting and recommending solutions.

Unplanned hospital admissions
Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and re-admissions 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 at 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).

Repeat prescribing
Manage the repeat prescribing re-authorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required.

Service development
Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).

Information management
Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.

Medicines quality improvement
Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Medicines safety
Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance. Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations. Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economies RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs). Assist practices in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system. Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

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
Essential

• Mandatory registration with the General Pharmaceutical council
• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical society
• Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm or equivalent)
• Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience

Desirable

• Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent qualification

Knowledge and skills
Essential

• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• 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 based healthcare.
• Excellent IT skills
• Ability to plan, manage, monitor, advice and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions
• Work effectively independently and as a team member

Experience
Essential

• Minimum of two years post-qualification experience
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence based healthcare
• An appreciation of the nature of General Practice

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.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).