Job Description

WOKINGHAM NORTH PCN LIMITED

SENIOR CLINICAL PHARMACIST

FULL TIME / PART TIME (MINIMUM 30 HOURS PER WEEK)

PRACTICE BASED ONLY NO HYBRID WORKING AVAILABLE

Wokingham North PCN Limited is looking for a highly motivated Senior Clinical Pharmacist to join our team of clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians and be part of our growth and development.

The post holder will be an independent prescriber, with preferred experience of managing a small team and working within a hub environment. They will be passionate about leadership and development of staff as well as clinically excellent.

The post-holder will work on site with the PCN Clinical Directors and Senior Practice Partners to provide safe and effective clinical pharmacy provision across the entire PCN comprising of 3 GP practices.

Please note - Previous applicants need not apply

Main duties of the job

Provide leadership on all medicines-related issues for the PCN. Lead and develop a pharmacy team, provide support, and manage employee relations issues for direct reports. Support integration of general practice with wider healthcare systems to improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare, and manage general practice workload. Support patients with long-term conditions, prescribing as an independent prescriber for relevant conditions. Develop and manage new services based on new medicines or NICE guidance, such as care pathways for new oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation. Review medication needs and support patients in optimising their medicine use. Conduct clinical medication reviews, making changes within the scope of practice or referring to other professionals as needed. Home visits may be required. Develop patient facing clinics for you and your pharmacy team within the scope of practice and interest. Ensure PCN compliance with CQC standards related to medicines. Provide extended hours services as part of the wider network Ensure QOF, PQS and QUIPP targets are met.

Primary Care Network Senior Clinical Pharmacist

Person Specification

Essential Criteria

Qualifications

Master's degree in pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent

Independent Prescriber

Registered with GPhC

Member of RPS

Specialist knowledge through a Postgraduate Diploma and qualifications (e.g. clinical, community, therapeutics) or equivalent

Evidence of recent and relevant Continuing Professional Development

Experience

At least 2 years post registration experience in a hospital, community or general practice setting

Experience of managing and developing a team of pharmacy clinicians.

Experience of undertaking medication or medicine use reviews, and patient counselling

Experience of working with clinicians and multidisciplinary/multiagency work

Experience of facilitating change to improve clinical practice

Experience of managing and developing a Pharmacy Team.

Experience of delivering training sessions to various clinical groups.

Experience in undertaking clinical audit.

Skills

Capacity to be innovative and develop the role of a practice pharmacist

Effective interpersonal, communication (both written and oral) presentation and influencing skills

Ability to work with a range of clinical and non-clinical personnel as part of a team

Ability to communicate medicines and service-related information to decision makers at all levels and have advice challenged

Ability to work independently and effectively with a high degree of motivation for long periods

Ability to prioritise and work to deadlines, often with frequent interruptions and urgent requests

Ability to motivate people and facilitate change

Ability to define, collate, analyse and interpret data

Able to utilise databases and information technology, including word processing, spread-sheets and presentation packages effectively

Ability to communicate information to patients and carers in an appropriate manner, using well developed empathy skills

Ability to deal with occasionally distressing or emotional circumstances, including contact with terminally ill patients and their carers or relatives

Accepts responsibility for own work with freedom to take action based on own interpretation of broad clinical/professional policies

Knowledge

Knowledge of issues regarding the protection of vulnerable adults and children, frail elderly and those with dementia

Knowledge of medicines management issues across primary, acute and domiciliary care settings including strategies for the improvement of prescribing

Understanding and appreciation of national and local policies which impinge on primary care prescribing

Understanding of the current issues facing primary care teams

Understanding of the principles of clinical governance and how these apply in the broader arena

Understanding of personal health and safety responsibilities

An understanding of prescribing budgets and financial information

Personal Attributes

Professional approach to work demonstrating excellent interactive patient skills. Guided by professional code, accountable and responsible for own professional actions

Ability to gain the confidence and credibility of a range of professional

Able to work under pressure and prioritise task to ensure urgent work is completed on time

Able to engage rapidly with existing stakeholder and networks

Builds credibility (personal and organisational) and rapport quickly

Able to communicate effectively and engage with individuals from other agencies, including patients and the public

Ability to travel between sites in a timely manner

Overview of organisation

Job Summary:

Wokingham North PCN comprises 3 GP practices - Parkside Family Practice (17,200), Wargrave Surgery (7,700) and Woodley Centre Surgery (13,800). The post-holder will work across the practices and will be assigned a lead clinical and operational contact for each practice. This post is part of the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme for PCNs funded by NHS England.

Responsible to: Clinical Lead GPs & Practice Managers

Accountable to: PCN Clinical Directors and Clinical Lead GPs

Base: Working equally across three network practices as detailed below as well as time dedicated to staff management, clinical supervision, training and networking. Main practice base to be confirmed on appointment

Band/Salary: Band 8A - salary dependent upon experience

The post-holder is a very experienced pharmacist and the salary has been set to reflect this. The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a clinical role and will have senior leadership responsibilities.

The post holder will manage a team of Clinical Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians across the 3 practices. They will provide clinical supervision, training, support and mentorship. They will set objectives within the team that match both the professional development of each team member and the priorities of the three surgeries. The post holder will develop the clinical skills of the Pharmacy Team within their scope of practice and allocate work accordingly, with direction from the 3 practices.

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, especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities.

The post-holder will provide primary support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will help support the repeat prescriptions system, deal with acute prescription requests, medicine 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 patients in the GP practices.

The post-holder will provide clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement, manage some aspects of the quality and outcomes framework (QOF) and enhanced services and contribute to the delivery of the local medicines optimisation strategy.

The post holder will ensure that the practices liaise 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.

Primary Duties and Areas of Responsibility

Long-term condition patients

Telephone consultations with patients with multi?morbidities and, in partnership with primary healthcare colleagues, implement improvements to patient's medicines, including de-prescribing.

Development of long-term condition patient facing clinics (e.g. hypertension, coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, diabetes) including participation in group consultations.

Review the on-going need for each medicine to ensure they get the best use of their medicines (i.e. medicines optimisation).

Support achievement of relevant QOF, QIPP, PQS and IIF targets.

Clinical Medication Review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multi?morbidity and polypharmacy and care home residents. Implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests.

Support and develop the clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to be able to carry out medication reviews within their scope of practice.

Patient facing medicines support

Develop patient facing clinics for the Pharmacy Team for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice.

Telephone medicines support

Provide telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

Act as a source of medicines information for all the practice team and patients, (such as around doses, side effects, adverse events, possible alternatives, i.e. around out of stocks). Suggest and recommend solutions.

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).

Work in partnership with hospital and local provider colleagues (e.g. care of the elderly doctors and clinical pharmacists) to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care.

Signposting

Ensuring that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the right care, with an emphasis on training reception teams to help with pathways and liaising with external facilitators where necessary to improve processes.

Ensuring that the addition of the pharmacist to the clinical team results in a reduction in workload for other clinicians.

Unplanned Hospital Admissions

Work with case managers, multidisciplinary (health and social care) review teams, hospital colleagues and virtual ward teams to manage medicines-?related risk for readmission and patient harm.

Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high-?risk patient groups.

Repeat prescribing

Produce and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy.

Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation 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.

Medicines Safety

Identify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use of medicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence from clinical trials. Manage the process of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners.

Medicines Quality Improvement Programme

Working with colleagues, identify and provide leadership on areas of prescribing and medicines optimisation.

Conduct clinical audits and medicine optimisation projects or work with colleagues such as GP registrars, practice managers etc., feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Present results and provide leadership on suggested changes. Contribute to national and local research initiatives.

Frailty

Take a leading role in the contractual requirements to support frail patients with their medication including medication review and patient identification (i.e. patients with problematic polypharmacy) Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Work with the ICB to implement local and national guidelines including NICE etc.

Liaise with hospital colleagues where prescribing needs to be returned to specialists.

Education and Training

Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation. Provide training to visiting medical, nursing, pharmacy and other healthcare students where appropriate.

Supervision

Provide support and mentorship to junior clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

Care Quality Commission

Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

Undertake risk assessment and ensure compliance with medicines legislation.

Public Health

To support public health campaigns. To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.

Communication

The post-holder should recognize the importance of effective communication within the team and will strive to:

Communicate effectively with other team members

Communicate effectively with patients and carers

Recognise people's needs for alternative methods of communication and respond accordingly.

Confidentiality:

the post-holder will have access to confidential information relating to patients and their carers, practice staff and other healthcare workers. They may also have access to information relating to the practice as a business organisation. All such information from any source is to be regarded as strictly confidential

Information relating to patients, carers, colleagues, other healthcare workers or the business of the practice may only be divulged to authorised persons in accordance with the practice policies and procedures relating to confidentiality and the protection of personal and sensitive data

Health & safety:

The post-holder will implement and lead a full range of promotion and management of their own and others' health and safety and infection control as defined in the practice Health & Safety policy, the practice Health & Safety manual, and the practice Infection Control policy and published procedures.

Equality and diversity:

The post-holder will support the equality, diversity and rights of patients, carers and colleagues, to include:

Acting in a way that recognizes the importance of people's rights, interpreting them in a way that is consistent with practice procedures and policies, and current legislation

Respecting the privacy, dignity, needs and beliefs of patients, carers and colleagues

Behaving in a manner which is welcoming to and of the individual, is non-judgmental and respects their circumstances, feelings priorities and rights.

Personal/Professional development:

The post-holder will participate in any training programme implemented by the practice as part of this employment, with such training to include:

Participation in an annual individual performance review, including taking responsibility for maintaining a record of own personal and/or professional development

Taking responsibility for own development, learning and performance and demonstrating skills and activities to others who are undertaking similar work

Quality:

The post-holder will strive to maintain quality within the practice, and will:

Alert other team members to issues of quality and risk

Assess own performance and take accountability for own actions, either directly or under supervision

Contribute to the effectiveness of the team by reflecting on own and team activities and making suggestions on ways to improve and enhance the team's performance

Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patients needs

Effectively manage own time, workload and resources

Contribution to the Implementation of Services:

The post-holder will:

Apply practice policies, standards and guidance Discuss with other members of the team how the policies, standards and guidelines will affect own work Participate in audit where appropriate

Additional responsibilities for practice participating in the Dispensing Services Quality Scheme,

staff competency recording,

development and maintenance of standard operating procedures, and recording and analysis of medication dispensing and prescribing significant events.

Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Permanent

Pay: From 55,000.00 per year

Benefits:

Company pension Sick pay
Work Location: In person