Clinical Pharmacist

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Job Overview:

A relatively new role in General Practice combining patient-facing, analytical and administrative elements of work, bringing expert knowledge of medicines to multi-disciplinary primary care teams. Specifically, each IPC Clinical Pharmacist will work for one Primary Care Network (group of several GP practices) in Coastal West Sussex.

Main Duties:

The precise role of each Clinical Pharmacist will vary slightly depending upon which Primary Care Network the post-holder works for but will be made up of many of the following:

• Clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas.
• Be prescribers, or committed to completing training to become prescribers.
• Contribute to the delivery of effective daily processes for the transfer of care between hospitals and GPs including effective signposting, recommendation of medication changes and communication accordingly.
• Support colleagues and patients with medication queries and monitoring.
• Take responsibility for the care management of patients with chronic diseases.
• Undertake clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex polypharmacy.
• Focus especially on the elderly, people in care homes, those with multiple co-morbidities (in particular frailty, COPD and asthma) and people with learning disabilities or autism.
• Provide specialist expertise in the use of medicines, while helping to address both the public health and social care needs of patients.
• Through the use of audit and action planning, help to tackle inequalities.
• Provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation (including ensuring prescribers in the practice conserve antibiotics in line with local antimicrobial stewardship guidance) and quality improvement.
• Contribute to the General Practice quality and outcomes framework (QOF) and enhanced services.
• Use structured medication reviews to support patients to take their medications to get the best from them, reduce waste and promote self-care.
• Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components (e.g. advice on treatment pathways and patient information leaflets).
• Work with general practice teams to ensure that practices are compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.
• Take a lead role in some aspects of supporting further integration of General Practice with other healthcare teams to help improve patient outcomes, ensure better access to healthcare and help manage general practice workload.
• Specifically, contribute to the Quality Improvement Schemes (QIS) for practices (e.g. to reduce prescribing spend and unplanned admissions)
• Develop relationships and work closely with other pharmacy professionals across Primary Care Networks and the wider health and social care system
• Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols, clinical research with medicines, liaison with specialist pharmacists, liaison with community pharmacists and anticoagulation.

Person Specifications: