Clinical Pharmacist
Job Description
Job summary
To provide a comprehensive pharmacy service to patients of the CLICK Primary Care Network.
The post holder will work within their competencies as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide expertise in clinical medicines management, provide face to face structured medication reviews, manage long term conditions, management of medicines on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, manage repeat prescription authorisations and reauthorisation, acute prescription requests, while addressing both the public health and social care needs of patients in the GP practices that make up the Primary Care Network.
The post holder will undertake medication reviews of patients with polypharmacy especially for older people, people in residential care homes and those with multiple co-morbidities. The post holder will provide leadership on quality improvement and clinical audit as well as managing some aspects of the Quality and Outcomes Framework and the Primary Care Network Direct Enhanced Service Specifications.
Main duties of the job
1. Patient Facing Long Term Condition Clinics
2. Patient Facing Clinical Medication Reviews
3. Patient Facing Care Home Medication Reviews
4. Patient Facing Domiciliary Clinical Medication Reviews
5. Risk stratification
6. Unplanned hospital admissions
7. Management of common, minor and self-limiting ailments
8. Patient facing medicines support
9. Telephone medicines support
10. Management of medicines at discharge from hospital
11. Medicine information to practice staff and patients
12. Signposting
13. Repeat prescribing
14. Service development
15 . Information management
16. Medicines quality improvement
17. Medicines safety
18. Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations
19. Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation
20. Ensure practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved
21. Support public health campaigns.
22. Collaborative working arrangements
About us
CLICK (Chard, Ilminster and Langport) Primary Care Network (PCN) is located in South Somerset with 5 GP practices and a diverse population spread across town and rural locations. CLICK has a population size of around 50,000 patients.
Currently led under the Clinical Director leadership of Dr Christoph Kollmeier.
The PCN is made up of:
Langport Surgery
Ariel Healthcare (Chard)
Summervale (Ilminster)
The Meadows (Ilminster)
Churchview (Ilminster)
As a PCN we are forward thinking, innovate and driven to deliver the best patient care for our population. This includes health population management, and this role ties in with supporting that and tracking the improvements we can make to patients lives.
Job responsibilities
Key relationships:
The patients, doctors, prescribers and practice teams within the Primary Care Network
Somerset ICB Practice Support Pharmacists and Medicines Management Team
Local Community Pharmacists
Other professionals, other NHS/private organisations e.g. ICB and the general public
Key duties and responsibilities
1. Patient Facing Long Term Condition Clinics
See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. Respiratory, Cardiovascular and Diabetes). 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 Senior Pharmacists or GPs for medicine improvement.
2. Patient Facing Clinical Medication Reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GPs on prescribing and monitoring.
3. Patient Facing Care Home Medication Reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacist, nurses or GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
4. Patient Facing Domiciliary Clinical Medication Reviews
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GPs on prescribing and monitoring. Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.
5. 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.
6. 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 high-risk patient groups.
7. Management of common, minor and self-limiting ailments
Manage a caseload of patients with common, minor or self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence. Signpost to community pharmacy and refer to GPs or other healthcare professional where appropriate.
8. Patient facing medicines support
Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines in the practice.
9. Telephone medicines support
Provide telephone support for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.
10. Management of medicines at discharge from hospital
Reconcile medicines following discharge from hospital, 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).
11. Medicine information to practice staff and patients
Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other network staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines, suggesting and recommending solutions. Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
12. 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.
13. Repeat prescribing
Produce and implement a repeat prescribing policy within each PCN practice. 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 rests in place when required.
14. Service development
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