PCN Clinical Pharmacist inBirmingham inBirmingham PUBLISHED THU 14 NOV 2024

i3 PCN is pleased to announce a vacancy for a dedicated and experienced Clinical Pharmacist to join our dynamic multidisciplinary team. This essential role focuses on modernising care pathways and fostering collaboration across professional boundaries within our expanding Primary Care Network. The successful candidate will lead PCN-wide projects and should be able to work independently while demonstrating initiative and expertise. Key responsibilities will include conducting medication review clinics, executing electronic prescribing, and performing MHRA safety searches. Please note that Independent Prescribing is a compulsory requirement for this position, given the scope of responsibilities, which also encompass medication queries, high-risk drug monitoring, and ensuring compliance with CQC standards. We invite enthusiastic professionals who are ready to make a significant impact to submit their applications.

The post holder will act within their professional boundaries, collaborating closely with a team of clinicians in General Practice. They will be supported by a Senior Clinical Pharmacist who will provide guidance and mentorship.

In this patient-facing role, the post holder will take responsibility for various aspects of medicines management within the Network, conducting clinical medication reviews to proactively manage patients with complex polypharmacy. They will serve as primary support for general practice staff regarding prescription and medication queries, assisting with the repeat prescription system, addressing acute prescription requests, and managing medicines reconciliation during transfers of care.

Additionally, the post holder will provide expertise in clinical medicines advice, addressing both public and social care needs of patients within the PCN. They will offer clinical leadership on medicines optimisation and quality improvement, managing certain elements of the Quality and Outcomes Framework and enhanced services. Furthermore, the post holder will ensure effective integration with community and hospital pharmacy services to optimise skill mix, improve patient outcomes, enhance access to healthcare, and assist in managing workload effectively.

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See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required (e.g. COPD, asthma).

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.

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for senior clinical pharmacist, nurses and/or GP on prescribing and monitoring.

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.

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for the senior clinical pharmacists, nurses and GPs on prescribing and monitoring.

Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self-limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence.

Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

Answers relevant medicine-‐related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.

Suggesting and recommending solutions.

Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes

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.

To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, 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).

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.

Produce and implement a practice repeat Prescribing policy.

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 tests in place when required.

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.

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).

Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.

Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the GPs, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the practice team.

Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.

Monitor Network prescribing against the local health economy’s RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).

Assist practices in seeing and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practice’s computer system.

Auditing practice’s compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.

Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.

Work with the general practice teams to ensure the Network is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

To support public health campaigns.

To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.