Clinical Pharmacist

at  Health and Beyond

Job purpose/summary: The post holder is a pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists in general practice. In this role they will be supported by a senior clinical pharmacist who will develop, manage and mentor them. 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 (s). 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. The post holder holds a non-medical prescribing qualification. Main Roles & Responsibilities Patient facing Long-term condition Clinics. See (where appropriate) 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.
Structured Medication Review. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients face to face or virtually and produce recommendations for nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring. Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments. Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence.
Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate. 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.
Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes. Unplanned hospital admissions. Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to highrisk 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 highrisk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).
Signposting. Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long term condition reviews etc. Repeat prescribing.
Manage and support the repeat prescribing process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions, prescribing and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review. Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place when required. Risk stratification. Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre-prepared practice computer searches.
This might include risks that are patient related, medicine related, or both. Service development. Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. Enhanced access to care homes ,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 economys 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. Collaborative Working Relationships Recognises the roles of other colleagues within the organisation and their role to patient care Demonstrates use of appropriate communication to gain the co-operation of relevant stakeholders (including patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other NHS/private organisations e.g.
CCGs) Demonstrates ability to work as a member of a team Is able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary Actively work toward developing and maintaining effective working relationships both within and outside the practice and locality Foster and maintain strong links with all services across locality Explores the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships Demonstrates ability to integrate general practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams Liaises with CCG colleagues including CCG Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit Liaises with CCG pharmacists and Heads of Medicines Management/ Optimisation to benefit from peer support Liaises with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to: o Patients o GPs, nurses and other practice staff o Other healthcare professionals including CCG pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, optometrists, dentists, health and social care teams and dieticians etc. o Locality / GP prescribing lead o Locality managers o Community nurses and other allied health professionals o Community and hospital pharmacy teams o Hospital staff with responsibilities for prescribing and medicines optimisatio

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