Job Description

As an experienced pharmacist, you will work within your professional and clinical boundaries as part of an established multi-disciplinary team to provide expertise and leadership in all areas of medicine related practice in a patient facing role


To develop and deliver a PCN clinical pharmacy service for patients in primary care encompassing general medical practice, as well as people requiring care in their own homes or in residential care homes. To ensure that PCN practices integrate with community and hospital pharmacy to help utilise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare, and help manage workload.

To provide leadership on matters pertaining to medicines optimisation within primary care, to advise on medicines use (risk, clinical governance, research and development, formulary, expenditure) and to develop/audit relevant protocols and guidelines. To manage, support and/or teach when appropriate, less experienced staff e.g. clincial pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, trainee pharmacists (including acting as a trainee pharmacist manager/tutor if required), pharmacy students and other members of the healthcare team.

To role model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coaching to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams /practices and across organisational boundaries

To manage medicines on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing including manage repeat prescriptions, acute prescription requests and antibiotic stewardship, while addressing both the public health and social care needs of patients across the primary care network practices.

Working in partnership with various organisations, to improve the quality and safety of care offered to our patients. Supporting better access to medicines, clinical medicines management, provide face to face structured medication reviews, tackling polypharmacy and manage long term conditions.


This role is pivotal to improving the quality of care and operational efficiencies so requires motivation and passion to deliver an excellent service within general practice.


The employer is Sunderland GP Alliance and the post-holder is expected to comply with the organisation's employment policies and procedures, but will have due regard to the PCN's own clinical and information governance policies and procedures, and any other policies and procedures necessary for the safe and effective discharge of the duties contained within this document.

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Leadership and management of a PCN clinical pharmacy team

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Operational management of team including line management of staff.


Responsible for day-to-day organisation and scheduling of work as well as effective and efficient deployment of resources.



To contribute to continuous quality improvement in medicines use through input into clinical governance and risk management issues

Patient facing long term condition clinics

See patients in multi?morbidity clinics and in partnership with primary healthcare colleagues and implement improvements to patient's medicines, including de-prescribing, managing own case load.

Patient facing clinical medication review and support

Undertake structured, clinical shared decision-making medication reviews with patients and utilising your independent prescribing and order relevant monitoring with appropriate review.

Telephone medicines support

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

Patient facing care home/residential clinical medication reviews

Manage own caseload of care home residents providing a structured medication review.



Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration

Patient facing domiciliary/home visits

Manage own caseload of vulnerable housebound patients at risk of hospital admission and harm from poor use of their medicines.


Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences. Identifying key areas of need for vulnerable patients and formulating care plans.

Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments

Manage own caseload for patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence, signposting as appropriate.

Triage/differentiated/undifferentiated diagnosis

Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate clinician for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

Answer all medicine?related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.

Unplanned hospital admissions

Devise and implement practice searches to identify cohorts of patients most likely to be at risk of an unplanned admission-re-admission from medicines


Lead the team in managing medicines?related risk for readmission and patient harm. Put in place changes to optimise prescribing of these medicines to high?risk patient groups

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital

Reconcile medicines following hospital discharge and upon admission to care homes, including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes manage these changes independently.


Work with hospital and community colleagues to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care.

Repeat prescribing

Produce if necessary and implement a practice repeat prescribing policy, ensuring promoting cost-effective use of medicines and minimising unnecessary waste. Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process.

Medicines Optimisation and Quality Improvement programmes

Lead the team in the delivery of local and national quality or cost effectiveness initiatives, identifying areas of prescribing for review.



Incorporate the objectives of medicines optimisation into every day general practice.



Conduct clinical audits and quality improvement projects, presenting results and providing leadership on suggested changes.

Service development

Develop and manage new services that are built around new medicines, or medicines within NICE guidance or a local care pathway. Contribute to the achievement of KPI's and PCN objectives.

Information management

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

Medicines safety

Identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines following national and local drug safety alerts e.g. MHRA.



Responsibility for management of risk stratification tools on behalf of the practice. Working with patients and the primary care team to minimise risks through medicines optimisation.



Manage the process of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners.



Provide leadership for antibiotic stewardship.

Care Quality Commission

Provide leadership to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.


Undertake risk assessment and ensure the management of medicines in the Practice complies with medicines legislation.

Shared Care and Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).


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

Public health

Support public health campaigns.

Communication and collaborative working

The post-holder should recognise the importance of effective communication.



It is vital the post holder works collaboratively with their PCN clinical director;


Recognises the roles of other colleagues within the network 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 lead a team

Is able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary.

Practice Responsibilities

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Contributes to the evaluation/audit and clinical standard setting with colleagues.

Records data in patient records systems promptly and accurately and to agreed standards.

Ensures appropriate use of read codes.

Participates in the auditing of practice activity as required.

Responsible for health and safety of themselves and others and actively co-operates with Health and Safety Policies and procedures.

Processes and actions incoming patient and hospital correspondence.

Attends in-house meetings, significant event audit meetings and other meetings as deemed necessary.

Ensures that the practice complaints system is adhered to at all times.

Awareness and compliance with all relevant guidelines e.g. data protection, confidentiality and health and safety.

Maintain current CPR and anaphylaxis certification and child/adult safeguarding training in line with local policies.

Training & Development

Fully participates in training and development

Engages in a programme of ongoing support and feedback to maximise the benefit of the training and development plan.

Confidentiality

In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health. They do so in confidence and have the right to expect that staff will respect their privacy and act appropriately.



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 or Alliance policies and procedures relating to confidentiality, and the protection of personal and sensitive data.

Health & Safety

The post-holder will assist in promoting and maintaining their own and others' health, safety and security as defined in the Practice Health & Safety Policy to include:
Identifying the risk involved in work activities and undertaking such activities in a way that manages those risks.

Ensuring that all accidents or dangerous accidents are reported and investigated, and follow up action taken where necessary.

Equality and Diversity

The post-holder will support the quality, 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 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-judgemental and respects their circumstances, feelings, priorities and rights.

Quality

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


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 enhanced the team's performance.

Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patients' needs.

Effectively manage own time, workload and resources.

Communication

The post-holder should recognise 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.


The employer is Sunderland GP Alliance and the post-holder is expected to comply with the Alliance's employment policies and procedures.