We are looking for a motivated and forward-thinking clinical pharmacist to join our GP practice. The Clinical Pharmacist will be a patient-facing role with plenty of opportunity to utilise your clinical skills to improve the health of the local community; this will include managing long-term conditions, supporting hospital discharge prescribing arrangements, providing specific advice for those on multiple medications, clinical audits to improve patient care, and supporting the practice to develop the clinical pharmacist role.
Clinical supervision and mentorship will be provided. We are looking for candidates who are enthusiastic and adaptable to change, with excellent clinical skills and a good level of competence in the use of I.T. Candidates should exhibit good organisational skills and the ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of healthcare professionals and other stakeholders including patients, families, and carers.
Main duties of the job
1. 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.
2. Be a prescriber, or completing training to become a prescriber, and work with and alongside the general practice team.
3. Be responsible for the care management of patients with chronic diseases and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy.
4. Provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation (including ensuring prescribers in the practice conserve antibiotics in line with local antimicrobial stewardship guidance) and quality improvement, whilst contributing to the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.
5. Through structured medication reviews, support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste, and promote self-care.
6. Act as the point of contact for all medicine-related matters.
7. Consult patients within defined levels of competence and independently prescribe acute and repeat medication.
8. Provide medication review services for patients in the practice.
9. Review medications for newly registered patients.
10. Encourage cost-effective prescribing throughout the organisation.
11. Organise and oversee the medicines optimisation systems.
About us
Lambourn Surgery is a rural Practice in West Berkshire, serving a large geographical area. We are on the edge of 3 counties, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Wiltshire.
We form part of the West Berkshire Rural PCN, made up of 3 practices, Hungerford, Kintbury/Wootton-Hill, and ourselves. We have an excellent relationship and our ARRS staff are in constant touch with each other for support and collaborative working.
Even though we are rural, we are a short distance from junctions 14 and 15 of the M4, and within easy reach of Newbury and Swindon.
We have 6500 patients and we dispense to around 3000 of those. We work closely with the local village pharmacy who dispense to most of the remainder of the practice population. Our clinical system is Systm One, we can give training in its use to anyone unfamiliar with the software.
We are a training practice and as such we host GP registrars and student nurses in training.
We have 5 GPs, 3 of which are partners, and one is a GP trainer.
We are a friendly practice with a great team. We all work closely together to achieve the best outcomes for our patients.
Job responsibilities
The Clinical Pharmacist in a general practice organisation has the following key responsibilities in relation to delivering health services:
1. 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.
2. Be a prescriber, or completing training to become a prescriber, and work with and alongside the general practice team.
3. Be responsible for the care management of patients with chronic diseases and undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy, especially the elderly, people in care homes, those with multiple co-morbidities (in particular frailty, COPD and asthma) and people with learning disabilities or autism (through STOMP Stop Over Medication Programme).
4. Provide specialist expertise in the use of medicines whilst helping to address both the public health and social care needs of patients at the organisation and help in tackling inequalities.
5. Provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation (including ensuring prescribers in the practice conserve antibiotics in line with local antimicrobial stewardship guidance) and quality improvement, whilst contributing to the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.
6. Through structured medication reviews, support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste, and promote self-care.
7. 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.
8. Develop relationships and work closely with other pharmacy professionals across the wider health and social care system.
9. Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols, clinical research with medicines, liaison with specialist pharmacists (including mental health and reduction of inappropriate antipsychotic use in people with learning difficulties), liaison with community pharmacists and anticoagulation.
10. Be part of a professional clinical network and have access to appropriate clinical supervision.
11. Act as the point of contact for all medicine-related matters, establishing positive working relationships.
12. Consult patients within defined levels of competence and independently prescribe acute and repeat medication.
13. Receive referrals and directed patients from triage services and other clinicians.
14. Provide medication review services for patients in the practice and during domiciliary visits to the local nursing home.
15. Manage a caseload of complex patients.
16. Manage a therapeutic drug monitoring system and the recall of patients taking high-risk drugs, i.e., anticoagulants, anticonvulsants, and DMARDs etc.
17. Deliver long-term conditions clinics and home visits particularly for patients with complicated medication regimes and prescribe accordingly.
18. Provide pharmaceutical consultations to patients with long-term conditions as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team.
19. Review medications for newly registered patients.
20. Improve patient and carer understanding of confidence in and compliance with their medication.
21. Encourage cost-effective prescribing throughout the organisation.
22. Implement and embed a robust repeat prescribing system.
23. Provide advice and answer medication-related queries from patients and staff.
24. Organise and oversee the organisations medicines optimisation systems including the repeat prescribing and medication review systems.
25. Improve the quality and effectiveness of prescribing through clinical audit and education to improve performance against NICE standards and clinical and prescribing guidance.
26. Develop yourself and the role through participation in clinical supervision, training, and service redesign activities.
27. Ensure appropriate supervision of safe storage, rotation, and disposal of vaccines and drugs. Apply infection-control measures within the practice according to local and national guidelines.
28. Provide subject matter expertise on medication monitoring, implementing and embedding a system.
29. Support clinicians with the management of patients suffering from drug and alcohol dependencies.
30. Actively signpost patients to the correct healthcare professional.
31. Manage a caseload of complex patients and potential care institutions and provide advice for the GP management of more complex patients or areas such as addictive behaviours, severe mental illness, or end-of-life care.
32. Review the latest guidance ensuring the organisation conforms to NICE, CQC etc.
33. Provide targeted support and proactive reviews for vulnerable, complex patients and those at risk of admission and re-admission to secondary care.
34. Handle prescription queries and requests directly.
35. Provide proactive leadership on medicines and prescribing systems to the organisation, patients, and their carers.
36. Support in the delivery of enhanced services and other service requirements on behalf of the organisation.
37. Participate in the management of patient complaints when requested to do so and participate in the identification of any necessary learning brought about through clinical incidents and near-miss events.
38. Undertake all mandatory training and induction programmes.
39. Contribute to and embrace the spectrum of clinical governance.
40. Attend a formal appraisal with your manager at least every 12 months. Once a performance/training objective has been set, progress will be reviewed on a regular basis so that new objectives can be agreed.
41. Contribute to public health campaigns (e.g., COVID-19 or flu clinics) through advice or direct care.
42. Maintain a clean, tidy, effective working area at all times.
Person Specification
Qualifications
* GPhC registered pharmacist.
* Hold or be working towards a GPhC independent prescribing qualification.
* Minor ailments certification.
* Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
* Working towards faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
* MUR and repeat dispensing certification.
Experience
* An appreciation of the nature of GPs and general practice.
* An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing, and strategies for improving prescribing.
* Experience and an awareness of common acute and chronic conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice.
* An appreciation of the new NHS landscape including the relationships between individual practices, PCNs, and the commissioners.
* Minimum of two years working as a pharmacist demonstrated within a practice portfolio.
* Experience in managing pharmacy services in primary care.
* Understanding of the mentorship process.
* Broad knowledge of general practice.
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.
£43,500 to £50,500 a year. Pay dependent on experience.
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