Deputy Senior Clinical Pharmacist

Job summary

Central & West Warrington Primary Care Network has a large team of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians who work across the Practices providing a range of services including medicine reconciliation, discharge planning, structured medication reviews, cardiovascular disease interventions and clinical governance work.

The PCN has a strong focus on training and research. We train Pharmacy undergraduates, trainee Pharmacy Technicians and Pre-registration Pharmacists. We have strong collaborative working partnerships with the local acute trust and local community pharmacy some of whom we partner with when training. We are a research PCN supported by a PCN research team. The postholder would be expected to support these activities and foster innovation.

The postholder would support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist (CP) with being part of our clinical leadership team within the PCN and if required will attend our monthly Clinical Advisory Team (CAT) meetings which report to the PCN Executive Board. This team review PCN policies, consider the introduction of new guidance, review team quality indicators and review incidents amongst other clinical governance activities.

Main duties of the job

The postholder is a Clinical Pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of Pharmacists in General Practice. In this role they will be responsible for supporting the Senior Clinical Pharmacist to manage the Clinical Pharmacy team and Practice Lead Clinical Pharmacists.

The postholder will undertake some clinical sessions supporting Practices and will also have protected designated sessions for senior responsibilities. The postholder will provide Primary Care 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 patients in the GP Practice(s).

About us

Central & West Warrington Primary Care Network (CWW PCN) is a collaborative group of 7 Practices who work together to care for our patients. The PCN is highly organised and proactive. The Clinical Director is supported by a Senior Manager and Digital & Transformation Lead.

Job description

Job responsibilities

The postholder will support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist to ensure that the Practices integrate 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 an excellent service within General Practice.

The postholder will support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist with clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement in relation to prescribing. Across the PCN Practices and PCN services, the postholder will support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist with delivery of the following:

- Ensuring that safe systems are place with regards to prescribing

- Ensuring all that systems are in place to ensure that all current national and local guidance with regards to prescribing is introduced and followed

- Providing leadership and coordination of prescribing actions and targets as required from Practice contracts, QOF, PCN DES, IIF, local contracts and any new NHS requirements that may present

- Ensuring staff are working efficiently and to their full potential

- Ensuring effective communication within the team and assume role of Chair to lead on team meetings in the Senior Clinical Pharmacist's absence

Team Leadership and Pharmaceutical oversight of Practice and PCN

See above

Patient facing long-term condition clinics

See patients in multimorbidity clinics and in partnership with primary healthcare colleagues and implement improvements to patients medicines, including de-prescribing

Manage own caseload and run long-term condition clinics where responsible for prescribing as an independent prescriber for conditions where medicines have a large component (, medicine optimisation for stable angina symptom control, warfarin monitoring and dose adjustment for patients requiring longterm anticoagulants)

Review the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with the medicines they are taking ensuring they get the best use of their medicines (, medicines optimisation)

Patient facing clinical medication review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests

Patient facing care home / residential clinical medication reviews

Manage own caseload of care home residents

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multimorbidity and polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests

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 medicines

Implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) order relevant monitoring tests

Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences

Identify key areas of need for vulnerable patients and formulating care plans

Management of common / minor / self-limiting ailments

Manage a caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of Practice and limits of competence

Where appropriate signpost to community pharmacy and refer to GPs or other healthcare professionals

Differential / undifferential diagnosis

Manage own caseload of patients and diagnose people with long-term and/or acute/common conditions/ailments while remaining within scope of Practice and limits of competence

Be aware of own ability and scope of Practice and thus refer to the GP and/or other healthcare professionals where further clinical expertise and evaluation may be needed

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.

Enhanced hours

Provide out of hours/on call/enhanced access services for the Practice and the patients as and when required. These can include patient facing and telephone consultations, signposting to other services and/or healthcare professionals where appropriate, while working within a scope of Practice and limits of competency

Medicine information to Practice staff and patients

Answer all medicine related enquiries from GPs, other Practice staff, other healthcare teams (, community pharmacy) and patients with queries about aspects of their medicine

Suggest and recommend solutions

Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes made

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital

Reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes, including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes manage these changes without referral to a GP, unless necessary

Perform a clinical medication review, produce a post discharge medicines care plan including dose titration and booking of follow up tests, work 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 (, those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes)

Work in partnership with hospital colleagues to proactively manage patients at high-risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care

Repeat prescribing

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist with the management of repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates; make necessary changes as an independent prescriber, and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist with the development and management of new services that are built around new medicines or NICE guidance, where new medicine/ recommendations allow the development of a new care pathway (, new oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation)

Medicines Quality Improvement Programmes

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist to identify and lead on areas of prescribing and medicines optimisation

Support the delivery of clinical audits and improvement projects or work with colleagues such as GP registrars, Practice Managers, PCN Manager etc.

Support the presentation of results and provide leadership on suggested changes

Contribute to national and local research initiatives

Medicines safety

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist with medicines safety requirements including taking high level responsibility for ensuring all national and local guidelines and updates are actioned within the Practice and PCN Services including NICE guidelines, Pan Mersey guidelines and MHRA alerts

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist to ensure adequate processes are in place to comply with regulatory requirements as monitored by CQC

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist to ensure PCN compliance with yellow card reporting

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

Support the management of implementing changes to medicines and guidance for practitioners

Collaborative working relationships

Recognise the roles of other colleagues within the organisation and their role to patient care

Demonstrate 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 , ICS/ PLACE)

Demonstrate ability to lead a team

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

Foster and maintain strong links with all services across locality

Explore the potential for collaborative working and takes opportunities to initiate and sustain such relationships

Demonstrate ability to integrate General Practice with community and hospital pharmacy teams

Liaise with ICS/ PLACE colleagues including ICS/ PLACE Pharmacists on prescribing related matters to ensure consistency of patient care and benefit

Liaise with ICS/ PLACE Pharmacists and Heads of Medicines Management/ Optimisation to benefit from peer support

Liaise with other stakeholders as needed for the collective benefit of patients including but not limited to patients, GP, Nurses and other Practice staff

Leadership

Demonstrate understanding of the pharmacy role in governance and be able to implement this appropriately within the workplace

Demonstrate understanding of, and contribute to, the workplace vision

Supports engagement with Patient Participation Groups (PPGs)

Demonstrate ability to improve quality within limitations of service

Support the Senior Clinical Pharmacist to review yearly progress and develop clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others

Demonstrate ability to motivate self to achieve goals

Demonstrate ability to lead a team and provide support to colleagues

Provide a leadership style which is underpinned by strongly held values of the organisation and around equality, diversity and openness; effectively build and maintain relationships with direct reportee(s) and other key individuals across the organisation

Promote diversity and equality in people management techniques and lead by example

For the full Job Description please see attached

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

Minimum of 5 years post qualification experience Minimum of 2 years experience within a primary care setting In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence- based healthcare An appreciation of the nature of GPs and General Practices An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing 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 audiences (, patients) Is able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long-term conditions Good IT skills Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate Able to work under pressure and to meet deadlines Produce timely and informative reports Gain acceptance for recommendations and influence/motivate/ persuade the audience to comply with the recommendations/agreed course of action where there may be significant barriers Work effectively independently and as a team member Demonstrates accountability for delivering professional expertise and direct service provision

Qualifications

Essential

Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhc) Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) or equivalent Independent Prescriber Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or training/experience Independent prescriber qualification

Desirable

Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society A member of or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Specialist knowledge acquired through post-graduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience Have completed at least 2 modules at level 7

Other

Essential

Self-Motivated Adaptable In date CRB Safeguarding adult and children level three Immunisation status Basic life support training

Desirable

Full Driving Licence

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