Clinical Pharmacist

Job description Job responsibilities

Patient facing long-term condition clinics

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 quality improvement.

Patient facing clinical medication review

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

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.

Patient facing domiciliary clinical medication review

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.

Management of common/minor/self-limiting ailments

Manage caseload of patients with common/minor/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 professionals where appropriate.

Patient facing medicines support

Provide patient facing clinics for those with medicines queries.

Telephone medicines support

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

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

Answer relevant medicine-related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams e.g. community pharmacy and patients with queries about medicines. Suggest and recommend solutions. Provide follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.

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 highrisk patient groups.

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital

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 highrisk groups of patients.

Signposting

Ensure patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time.

Repeat prescribing

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.

Risk stratification

Identify 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.

Service development

Contribute pharmaceutical advice for the development and implementation of new services that have medicinal components.

Information management

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

Medicines quality improvement

Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas directed by the Accountable Clinical Director (ACD) for the network, feedback results and implement changes in conjunction with the ACD.

Medicines safety

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

Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economys 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 practices computer system. Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

Education and Training

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

Care Quality Commission

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

Public health

Support public health campaigns. Provide specialist knowledge.