PCN Senior Clinical Pharmacist inKeynsham inKeynsham PUBLISHED
TUE 7 JAN 2025
St Augustine’s Medical Practice rTSbV9Kg
In addition to clinical duties, the Senior Clinical Pharmacist will engage in practice development work, including improving disease management, conducting safety audits, and facilitating communication between community pharmacists and local healthcare providers. This position requires an experienced pharmacist with strong leadership skills to mentor team members, manage day-to-day operations, and maintain high standards of patient care and safety. The role is vital in fostering collaborative relationships within the PCN and ensuring efficient pharmacy services for a diverse patient population.
Keynsham PCN
Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are groups of GP surgeries working together with a range of local providers, including community services, social care and the voluntary sector. PCNs build on core primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care through delivery of national and local service specifications alongside PCN initiatives.
Keynsham Primary Care Network (PCN) incorporates St Augustine Medical Practice and West View Surgery. We deliver strong patient care to our 28,000-patient population working collaboratively as a team.
Within the PCN our forward-thinking pharmacy team are experienced in building strong relationships with each other and the wider PCN team. The team are supported by the Clinical Director and PCN Manager.
Job Summary
The post holder is an experienced pharmacist, who acts within their professional boundaries, to develop, lead, manage and mentor a team of clinical pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians within Keynsham PCN. This will include clinical supervision sessions on a regular basis.
The post holder will provide clinical leadership to the Pharmacy team, Practices and PCN. This may entail
Leading on medicines optimisation and quality improvement initiatives
Identifying and implementing opportunities for improvement in prescribing practice
Overseeing clinical policy, protocol, and SOP development
Line managing and conducting probation and annual appraisals for Clinical Pharmacist and Pharmacy Technicians within the PCN
Advising and agreeing Clinical Pharmacists learning and development needs
Leading on management of the quality and outcomes framework and enhanced services.
Key Responsibilities
As the Senior Clinical Pharmacist, your key responsibilities are
To reduce the medicines related workload on doctors
Increase safety and quality of prescribed medicines
Provide support on medicines related issues to the whole practice team
Provide leadership and line management to the PCN pharmacy team
Be a point of contact for patients regarding medicines queries
Full details are listed on the Job Description
About us
Key Responsibilities
As the Senior Clinical Pharmacist, your key responsibilities are
To reduce the medicines related workload on doctors
- Increase safety and quality of prescribed medicines
- Provide support on medicines related issues to the whole practice team
- Provide leadership and line management to the PCN pharmacy team
- Be a point of contact for patients regarding medicines queries
You should support the following clinical work
Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multi-morbidity and polypharmacy and implement own prescribing changes (as an independent prescriber) and order relevant monitoring tests
Chronic Disease Management (for example, managing hypertension/Type 2 Diabetes/Asthma/COPD patients, polypharmacy review)
Medicines reconciliation on transfer between care providers
Care home/Frailty medication reviews
Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within scope of practice and limits of competence. Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.
You should also support the following practice development work
Focusing on QOF Domains, improving disease registers
Act as a source of medicines information for all of the practice team and patients, (such as around doses, side effects, adverse events, possible alternatives, i.e. around out of stocks). Suggesting and recommending solutions.
Prescribing Safety audits, Clinical audit, Local Enhanced Services support
Lead on prescription management (systems and processes, ensuring monitoring is being done, support clerical staff)
Actioning of MHRA safety alerts
Responsibilities underpinning the role
To develop and facilitate a good working relationship with community pharmacists and other local providers of healthcare.
To plan and organise own workload, including audit and project work, and training sessions for members of the practice team, patients, and carers.
To maintain registration as a pharmacist and comply with appropriate professional codes.
As appropriate to the post, to maintain and develop professional competence and expertise, keep up to date with medical/therapeutic evidence and opinion, and local and national service, legislation and policy developments, agree objectives and a personal development plan and participate in the appraisal process.
To attend local, regional and national meetings of relevance as agreed with the post holders line manager.
To undertake any other duties commensurate with the post holders grade as agreed with the post holders line manager.
Leadership
Act as Line Manager for the Pharmacy team to include managing day to day operations to achieve departmental objectives and engaging team members in the purpose and direction of the pharmacy team and :
- Agree with Clinical Director, PCN Manager, Prescribing Leads, and Practice Managers how the day-to-day schedule for your Clinical Pharmacy Team should be structured in order to manage the balance between contract delivery responsibilities and the need to support Primary Care services in general.
- Share any CPD learning acquired as a result of Stakeholder Engagement and Environmental Awareness analysis with The Clinical Director, PCN Manager, Prescribing Leads & with your immediate team.
- Monitor the inputs (number of clinical sessions and tasks) undertaken by your team members (CPs and PTs) and assess the effectiveness of these interventions.
- Support the individual CPs and PTs with queries whilst they progress through their independent prescribing qualification.
- Proactively organise and run team meetings for the PCNs Clinical Pharmacist/Pharmacy Tech team on a monthly basis liaising with wider PCN management team as appropriate
- Conduct probation reviews and appraisals for the CPs & PTs within their team in accordance with the appraisal policy whilst seeking timely feedback from the Clinical Director and practice GP prescribing leads
- Make recommendations to Clinical Director for any necessary individual or team development in a timely manner
- Through the use of personal networks, contribute & support the recruitment process for new recruits to the PCN Clinical Pharmacy Team
- Alert the PCN/Practice Manager to any Significant Events and associated learning that arises within them (independently of practice-based SE reporting)
- Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures relating to performance management.
- Ensure there is appropriate clinical supervision in place for all pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
- Ensure all pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are engaged with the review and appraisal systems.
Management of Medicines Safety
- Agree a process with each Practice within the PCN (recognising that all practices within the PCN are moving forward from a base of multiple individual processes) to ensure that all medicines safety alerts are managed, and learning is supported without unnecessary duplication of effort across individual practices, whilst in accordance with the reporting received and in compliance with CQC requirements.
- Proactively propose any necessary SOPS to be introduced or modified following discussions with Practices/PCN Prescribing Leads
Use of clinical systems and software
Is fully proficient with all aspects of the PCN/Practices clinical system in order to:
- Find and retrieve patients, booking appointments, enter narrative in the patient record, appropriate use of templates, apply clinical coding (including batch coding) and coding switches, complete tasks, file letters, run searches, write searches, effective use of OptimiseRx.
- Is fully familiar with the ICB Eclipse software and data interpretation.
- Supports colleagues in the Clinical Pharmacy Team with use of Software.
Health and Safety
Responsibilities of ALL staff in relation to Health and Safety:-
Take reasonable care of your own health and safety
Take reasonable care not to put other people - fellow employees and members of the public - at risk by what you do or don't do in the course of your work
Co-operate with Trust, making sure you understand and follow the health and safety policies and procedures
Attend all required training on Health and Safety related policies and procedure.
Do not interfere with or misuse anything that has been provided for your health, safety or welfare
Report and record any injuries, strains or illnesses suffered as a result of doing your job
Inform your manager if something happens that might affect your ability to work safely such as suffering an injury or a new medical condition.
Additional for those with management responsibilities
Identify through documented risk assessment any risks that exists within the department or during the delivery of the service
Investigate and manage incidents and near misses, ensuring actions are taken to prevent recurrence
Support the Risk and Safety Team in ensuring suitable and sufficient up to date Health and Safety information and guidance is available to all staff at all levels and disciplines across the organisation.
In addition to these functions the post holder is expected to
In agreement with their line manager carries out such other duties as may be reasonably expected in accordance with the band of the post.
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