Job summary

Haverhill Family Practice is a GP surgery in the market town of Haverhill, Suffolk.

We have a patient list size of over 19,000. We are seeking to employ an additional Clinical Pharmacist to work alongside our existing Medication Team at the Practice.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in General Practice, including promotion of repeat dispensing and online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.

To work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using extensive experience and in depth knowledge to be directly responsible for care and prescribing of defined cohort(s) of patients To deliver and develop pharmacy led medicines optimisation working with general practice and the wider multidisciplinary team, ensuring practice remains up to date To lead and promote, support and facilitate medicines optimisation for specialist area in the wider medicines agenda ensuring best value, reduced harm and improved outcomes. To lead and deliver evaluation and audit of service delivery for specialist area in order to ensure a high quality service and to further develop provision To work to the principles of Medicines Optimisation and relevant up to date national guidelines and evidence base. To support the Prescribing Lead with the medicines agenda within the practice

About us

Haverhill Family Practice is a friendly, innovative and caring surgery located in the market town of Haverhill in Suffolk with a current list size of 19,100 patients.

We are within walking distance of the town centre and main bus station.

We are a four Partner practice with the rest of the clinical team comprising of Salaried GP, regular GP locums, Advanced Care Practitioners (ACP's), Paramedics, Nurse Practitioners, Practice Nurses, Healthcare Assistants and Clinical Pharmacists/Technicians. We also have an in-house First Contact Physiotherapist, Mental Health Link Workers and Social Prescribers.

In 2022 we became a GP Training Practice. We actively support with the training of ST1/2 GP Trainees on a rotational basis.

In addition to our normal GP services we offer a minor surgery clinic, Covid vaccination clinics and home visits by our nursing team to monitor Long Term Medical Conditions for our housebound patients.

Quarterly training sessions are provided by Suffolk & North Essex Integrated Care Board and the Practice is closed one afternoon for clinical staff to attend. We also offer monthly Lunch & Learn sessions for the clinical team which is led by Consultants from the Nuffield Hospital.

We are a friendly, busy surgery with excellent staff retention.

Our CQC rating is Good.

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job Summary

Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting transformation programme to develop a new model of care, addressing our ambition to deliver person-centred, coordinated care across the Haverhill PCN. The Clinical Pharmacist core role responsibilities will cover clinical, and technical and administrative categories.

The Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice model is supported by the Five Year Forward View and GP Forward View to develop and utilise the role of pharmacy within primary care so it can pro-actively help patients stay safe, well and out of hospital as well as supporting efforts to reduce the demands on general practice.

Main Duties

The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in General Practice, including promotion of repeat dispensing and online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.

To work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using extensive experience and in depth knowledge to be directly responsible for care and prescribing of defined cohort(s) of patients To deliver and develop pharmacy led medicines optimisation working with general practice and the wider multidisciplinary team, ensuring practice remains up to date To lead and promote, support and facilitate medicines optimisation for specialist area in the wider medicines agenda ensuring best value, reduced harm and improved outcomes. To lead and deliver evaluation and audit of service delivery for specialist area in order to ensure a high quality service and to further develop provision. To work to the principles of Medicines Optimisation and relevant up to date national guidelines and evidence base. To support the Prescribing Lead with the medicines agenda within the practice

Main Responsibilities

Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas. Provide pharmaceutical consultations to patients with long term conditions as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team. Provide proactive leadership on medicines and prescribing systems to the practice team, patients and their carers. Improve patient and carer understanding of, confidence in and compliance with their medication. Provide advice and answer medication related queries from patients and staff Organise and oversee the practices medicines optimisation systems including the repeat prescribing and medication review systems.

Work with Haverhill Family Practice to support them with implementation of the PCN DES and day-to-day general practice.

Promote high quality, cost-effective prescribing in primary care, supporting the specifications within the PCN DES, including Structured Medication Reviews, Enhanced Health in Care Homes and other medicines optimisation tasks as determined by Haverhill Family Practice.

Improve the quality and effectiveness of prescribing through clinical audit and education to improve performance against NICE standards, and clinical and prescribing guidance. Develop yourself and the role through participation in clinical supervision, training and service redesign activities. Contribute to a patient safety culture through reporting and investigation of medicines incidents and undertaking proactive measures to improve patient safety. Work with community pharmacists, hospital pharmacists, and other stakeholders in the medicines supply chain to improve patient experience and manage incidents. Deliver training, mentoring and guidance to other clinicians and staff on medicine issues.

Respond to prescription requests from community patients, nursing/care home staff, pharmacy staff and GPs, processing them within recognised timescales ( 48 hours for routine prescriptions and same day for urgent prescriptions). This can include re-routing prescriptions to out of hours pharmacies for same day delivery.

Process monthly prescriptions for nursing/care homes, checking for changes and adherence/over-ordering issues.

Use Haverhill Family Practice templates to record near patient monitoring for high risk drugs.

Identify blood tests, recalls and reviews using established protocols and forward these to the appropriate clinician.

Support and respond to medicines-related queries from medical and nursing colleagues and from patients and relatives via face to face, via phone or via email. Queries can include issues with interactions or ADRs, availability of stock, swallowing difficulties, cost-effectiveness, urgent requests or extra supplies.

Review hospital discharge notifications and outpatient hospital letters and reconcile medication against current repeats, flagging up and correcting discrepancies.

Promote safe use of medication, reporting of medicines-related incidents and pro-actively preventing safeguarding incidents.

Use knowledge of GP computer prescribing systems and community pharmacy dispensing systems to advise on solving problems related to prescribing/dispensing and other areas to develop the skills of practice and pharmacy staff.

Support the review of care home procedures, making recommendations for potential improvements.

Observe the principles of clinical governance when developing policies, protocols, guidelines, SOPs and procedures.

Support practice prescribing budgets by on-going monitoring, audit and analysis of drug use and support practices in reviewing, developing and enhancing cost-effective prescribing. This includes staying aware of latest QIPP and other cost targets.

Help review medication with the pharmacists and make recommendations for prescribing changes to improve outcome and ensure prescribing of the most cost-effective product.

Other Responsibilities

ADMINISTRATION

Contributes and participates in audits, evaluation and clinical standard setting within the Practice.

Accurate and timely summarising of patient records and read-coding patient data

Complete all required paperwork for legal and administrative purposes in accordance with relevant standards

Ensure that all practice policies are fully implemented

Work in accordance with all governance and internal systems relating to (but not limited to) the management of clinical data and systems

OTHER DELEGATED DUTIES

This job description is not intended to be exhaustive - it may be changed after consultation with the post holder. The employee shares with the employer the responsibility for review and modification of duties.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

Registered Pharmacist with General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) Specialist knowledge acquired through postgraduate diploma level or equivalent training/experience

Desirable

Masters degree in pharmacy (MPharm) (or equivalent) Independent prescriber or working towards/intent of gaining independent prescribing qualification

---