GP Clinical Pharmacist - 1 year fixed term contract (maternity cover)

GP Clinical Pharmacist - 1 year fixed term contract (maternity cover)

We are looking for an enthusiastic, highly motivated clinical pharmacist to join our Newent practice, to provide maternity cover for one year starting March 2026. The practice forms part of the well-established TWNS PCN award winning pharmacy team and the PCN is made up of 5 practices, serving a population of around 50,000 patients. Each practice has a well established, experienced pharmacy team and this is a great opportunity to work closely with the clinical pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, GPs, Community Pharmacists, Reception teams and other health professionals to promote the safe, effective and high quality, cost effective use of medicines.

Please note that this post is advertised for up to 20 hours per week, but there may be the opportunity for up to 37.5 hours per week for an appropriate candidate willing to work across 2 sites (West Cheltenham Practice also).

Main duties of the job

The post holder will:

• Work within clinical competencies as part of a multidisciplinary team to provide expertise in Medicines Management
• Provide face to face structured medication reviews, review of patients with polypharmacy and those with multiple co morbidities
• Manage long term conditions, medicines on transfer of care and systems for safer prescribing, repeat re authorisation and acute prescription requests
• Provide leadership of quality improvement and clinical audit as well as managing some aspects of QOF in delivery of the PCN specifications

About us

TWNS PCN has 5 practices based in Newent, Staunton, West Cheltenham and 2 in Tewkesbury. We are led by proactive and forward thinking GPs and Business Managers who have recognised the benefit the pharmacy team can have to general practice and have worked to grow and develop the team since it was established in 2016, being early adopters through the National Pilot of Clinical Pharmacists in GP practice. The Pharmacy team were proud Clinical Pharmacy Congress 2018 winners of the Excellence in GP Practice award and "Pharmacy Team of the year" finalists in the General Practice Awards 2022.

We try to place our pharmacists predominantly in one practice for continuity, and so that they successfully integrate into the practice teams, but we meet regularly to ensure that processes are similar between surgeries and support each other.

This post is based in Newent but there may be the opportunity to provide some cover for West Cheltenham practice in Cheltenham also.

If you would like further information and/or to arrange an informal discussion about the role, please e mail Jackie Aberdeen.

Job responsibilities

Job Summary:

To ensure that medicines management processes within the practice are optimised to achieve highly effective, safe and patient centred prescribing.

To undertake patient consultations with a focus on groups of patients with potential medication issues.

To engage in shared learning with other clinical practice pharmacists working in associated local practices to support the development of this role within the practice.

Job Responsibilities:

• Management of medicines at discharge from hospital.
• To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes; identify and rectify unexplained changes; manage these changes without referral to the GP; perform a clinical medication review; produce a post discharge medicines care plan including dose titration and booking of follow up tests; and work 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). Work in partnership with hospital colleagues (e.g. care of the elderly doctors and clinical pharmacists) to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care.
• Risk stratification. Design, development and implementation of computer searches to identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines. Work with patients and the primary care team to minimise risks through medicines optimisation.
• Unplanned hospital admissions. Work with case managers, multidisciplinary (health and social care) review teams, hospital colleagues and virtual ward teams to manage medicines related risk for readmission and patient harm. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high risk patient groups.
• Repeat prescribing. Assist the Senior Clinical Pharmacist in reviewing, updating and implementing a practice repeat prescribing policy. Assist the repeat prescribing re authorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates; make necessary changes and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.
• Telephone and patient facing medicines support. Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines. Hold clinics for patients requiring face to face structured medication reviews (SMRs) i.e. a review of the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their medicine taking.
• Medication review. Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multi morbidities and polypharmacy and implement changes.
• Care home medication reviews. Manage own caseload of care home residents. Undertake structured medication reviews with patients with multi morbidities and polypharmacy and implement changes and order relevant monitoring tests. Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.
• Long term condition clinics. See patients in multi morbidity clinics and in partnership with primary healthcare colleagues and implement improvements to patients medicines, de prescribing. Run own long term condition clinics for conditions where medicines have a large component (e.g. medicine optimisation for stable angina symptom control, warfarin monitoring and dose adjustment for patients requiring long term anticoagulants).
• Cost saving programmes. Assist the Senior Clinical Pharmacist in making recommendations and implementing changes to medicines designed to save on medicine costs where a medicine or product with lower acquisition cost is now available.
• Medicine information to practice staff and patients. Answer medicine related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff and patients with queries about medicines. Suggesting and recommending solutions. Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.
• Medicines quality improvement. Assist the Senior Clinical Pharmacist in identifying areas of prescribing requiring improvement. Either conduct own audits and improvement projects or work with colleagues such as GP registrars. Contribute to national and local research initiatives.
• Training & Shared Learning. Provide education and training to primary healthcare team on therapeutics and medicines optimisation. Provide training to visiting medical students. Facilitate shared learning across clinicians within the practice on medication related issues.
• Implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations. Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economies Red/Amber/Green/Grey lists for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors or subject to shared care. Liaise directly with hospital colleagues where prescribing needs to be returned to specialists. Based on consideration of the contents of the Gloucestershire Joint Formulary, assist the practice in setting and maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practice's computer system. Suggest and develop computer decision support tools to help remind prescribers about the agreed formulary choice and local recommendations. Auditing practice compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance. Proactively provide internal communications on important prescribing messages to improve prescribers knowledge and work with the team to develop and implement other techniques known to influence implementation of evidence such as audit and feedback.
• Medicines safety. Horizon scan to identify national and local policy and guidance that affects patient safety through the use of medicines, including MHRA alerts, product withdrawals and emerging evidence from clinical trials.

Person Specification Qualifications

• Registration with General Pharmaceutical Council
• Clinical Pharmacy Diploma or equivalent training
• Completed or enrolled onto CPPE/NHSE pathway

Experience

• Experience of working in a GP practice or primary care

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.