Advanced Clinical Pharmacist, Acute Medicine Specialist

Job overview

Are you an experienced clinical pharmacist looking for your next leadership opportunity?

We are seeking an enthusiastic, highly motivated and forward-thinking Advanced Clinical Pharmacist to join our Medicine and Urgent Care Pharmacy Team. This exciting Band 8a role offers the opportunity to provide advanced clinical pharmacy services across Acute General Medicine while developing a specialist interest in one of the following areas:

• Cardiology
• Respiratory Medicine
• Diabetes
• Admissions Medicine

Your specialist portfolio will be discussed and agreed at interview, allowing you to align your expertise and career aspirations with service needs.

Main duties of the job

As an Advanced Clinical Pharmacist, you will be an integral member of the multidisciplinary team, providing expert medicines optimisation, clinical leadership and strategic direction across medicine services. You will play a key role in supporting patient flow, improving patient outcomes and ensuring the safe, effective and cost-efficient use of medicines.

You will:

• Deliver expert clinical pharmacy services to acute medical patients.
• Lead medicines optimisation initiatives and service developments.
• Support prescribing and medicines governance activities.
• Contribute to the development of clinical pathways and prescribing guidance.
• Work collaboratively across primary, secondary and community care interfaces.
• Develop and support innovative pharmacy practice, including prescribing and digital medicines management systems.
• Supervise, mentor and develop pharmacists, trainee pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
• Participate in weekend, late duty and on-call services

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Main Duties and Responsibilities The main responsibilities of the post include the following:

Clinical Services

• To provide information, advice and guidance on the safe, effective and economical use of medicines and to challenge poor practice.
• To clinically validate and prescribe (if qualified, competent and registered on the Trust Non-Medical Prescribers register) medicines to ensure patients are safely treated and have access to medicines in hospital and for discharge in a timely manner
• To maintain appropriate standards of service and safety; to enforce guidelines, policies and procedures to ensure standards are met.
• To fulfil the requirements of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Good Professional Practice.
• To optimise medicines management by reconciling drug histories, performing medication reviews, using patients’ own medicines, counselling and ensuring continuity of care on discharge.
• To detect, record and report adverse drug reactions to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and via Datix as per Trust Policy.
• To monitor pharmacy interventions and Datix reports to identify training and information needs
• To identify and implement service improvements
• To lead and support on the auditing of medicines and prescribing
• To implement countywide and local prescribing strategies within the Trust.
• Facilitate the expansion of the tools within EPMA.
• Support the development and implementations of medicine related guidance, policies and procedures within medicine and urgent care
• Support the process for new medicines being integrated into the Trust by Formulary submissions.
• To undertake validation duties in the dispensary.
• To supervise, check and, if necessary, undertake the supply of medicines. Technical checking is in place; pharmacists make initial validations and have a professional responsibility to decide on the need for their further involvement in the supply process.

Advanced Clinical Pharmacy Role

• To lead and develop practice and protocols and how these relate to national and other guidance.
• To optimise medicines through prescribing role operating within areas of competence (where appropriately qualified and authorised via the Trust NMP register).
• Provide a specialist clinical pharmacy service to the specialist area.
• To deputise for the Principal Pharmacist, Medicine and Urgent Care and support other Advanced Pharmacists within this division
• To provide Advice and Guidance for other pharmacists or other healthcare professionals
• To demonstrate an understanding of relevant pharmacy services priorities and contribute to the implementation of these priorities
• Develop and submit relevant business cases
• Requirement to undertake and support in project work
• To liaise with High Cost Pharmacy team in relation to biologics and the provision of the service
• To work across organisational boundaries (primary, secondary, community) to improve integration and reduce variation e.g. to work alongside tertiary care centre in the initiation and continuation of biologics; work alongside primary care in their formulary
• Leads the development and redesign of services and clinical pathways in collaboration with stakeholders, using data, evaluation, feedback, and workforce insight to inform decisions, and works across organisational boundaries to deliver measurable improvements in patient care and outcomes.

Education, Training and Supervision

• Act as a role model to the pharmacy team, including supporting junior pharmacist to achieve their objectives
• Attend clinical pharmacy meetings and education/training schemes relevant to post.
• To take part in formal and informal education of pharmacy staff and other healthcare professionals
• To be a Designated Supervisor and /or Designated Prescribing Practitioner for pharmacists undertaking their prescribing course and to supervise aspects of foundation year trainee pharmacists training.
• To be a supervisor on the Clinical Pharmacy Diploma course.
• To line manage and lead those staff allocated, undertaking appraisals, supervision and identification of training and development of their skills and knowledge.
• To assist in the induction of staff into the service; to help identify training and development needs.
• To provide information to patients, parents, and carers on admission and at discharge regarding treatment and medication to optimise patient concordance, particularly if there is a need to overcome language or communication barriers.
• To maintain up-to-date clinical knowledge in clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice to ensure a broad base of pharmaceutical knowledge, clinical reasoning and judgement.
• To take responsibility for own personal CPD by participating in education and training programmes to improve competence and to develop specialist expertise.
• To obtain/maintain prescribing qualification and support services and ward rounds as appropriate.
• To help provide the training for Technician’s enhanced patient counselling skills and Medicines Management Technician training.
• Designs, delivers and evaluates education for multi-professional teams, including inhaler technique, guideline updates, and complex case-based learning.
• Disseminates findings from audit and quality improvement projects at a local level, sharing learning to inform practice and improve patient outcomes; contributes to wider dissemination through presentations or publications where appropriate.
• Promotes a culture of learning by sharing insights from incidents, best practices, prescribing trends; linking outcomes to audit and research initiatives to drive continuous improvement.

Financial

• To be responsible for the co-ordinated advice to the Directorate to effectively manage expenditure on medicines, including tariff medicines, excluded medicines, prior approvals, individual funding requests etc.
• To horizon scan for new medicines likely to be excluded from the tariff and to advise on clinical and budgetary impact.
• To produce appropriate reports documenting the use and expenditure of medicines to evaluate trends and variations in prescribing in order to develop and implement policies aimed at containing expenditure and realising savings.
• To identify and manage medicine/pharmacy Quality/Innovation/Productivity/Prevention (QIPP) Schemes, including Cost Improvement Programme (CIP) Schemes within the Directorate to ensure this is coordinated within the Pharmacy and Trust.
• To be an authorised signatory for Pharmacy to commit expenditure via the Trusts Standing Financial Instructions and delegated ordering system.
• To provide expert professional advice on high cost and excluded medicines to clinicians, managers, finance and commissioners

Audit and Research

• To monitor the use of FP10(HNCs) by the Directorate to ensure the best use of resources in the Emergency Department.
• To develop, undertake and initiate clinical audit and practice research, drug use reviews, new drug evaluations to improve the quality of the Pharmacy Services.
• To guide and support others undertaking research audit and service improvements e.g., Trainee Pharmacists or Diploma Pharmacists.
• To record, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of pharmaceutical interventions and contributions to ward rounds and Directorate.
• To analyse and undertake root cause analysis of medication incidents

Other Duties

• To undertake duties elsewhere in the locality, if required.
• To undertake on call duties
• To provide a pharmacy service at weekends

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.