Clinical Pharmacist - Community

Job overview

The post holder is responsible for providing a specialist clinical pharmacy service to patients in their own homes or care homes in the Calderdale and Huddersfield area this may be as part of the Hospital at Home (H@H), Urgent Community response Team (UCR) or the wider Community Division.  The post holder will be an integral part of the Community Division Pharmacy team and work seamlessly between primary and secondary care and link with a range of healthcare professionals to optimise concordance and compliance with prescribed medication.

For the purpose of this post all patients who are accepted to the Community caseload and are registered with a GP in Calderdale or Huddersfield may be reviewed, they may also be referred directly from CHFT staff or Gateway to Care when concerns about medication that might increase chances of admission or readmission are identified. Patients may be on high-risk medication or complex regimes.

Main duties of the job

●      Patients will be reviewed in a home setting.

●      Review medication and work with Community Teams to ensure patients are able to derive the maximum benefit from medication.

●      Participate in MDT.

●      Assess compliance with medication  which may lead to hospital admission or deterioration in condition.

●      Working closely with patients to implement medicines optimisation.

●      Liaise with GPs and community pharmacists to ensure that medicines are reconciled following transfer to primary care.

●      Communicate with GPs, community pharmacists and hospital consultants recommendations in respect to individual patient medication changes as appropriate to the needs of the patient.

●      Provide skilled pharmaceutical counselling to patients to improve concordance and compliance with medicines and to reduce risks from medication related events. Promote concepts of self-care with patients, significant others, and healthcare professionals in respect to medicines and medicines concordance.

• Work in an independent manner to explore all ways of supporting patients with complex medication issues.
• Work in partnership with the patient, to support self-care.

●      Further develop and feedback on key performance indicators.

●      Work closely with Hospital at Home teams within CHFT and key personnel in the community in Calderdale and Huddersfield.

●       Work with the CHFT Community teams to develop the service and provide training to staff.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical Duties

Reviews medication in high-risk patients for clinical appropriateness, drug interactions and assess compliance and concordance issues:

●      Provides professional and clinical information and advice to the multidisciplinary healthcare staff in primary and secondary care, patients and carers, to support individual patient care and medicines management.

●      Makes recommendations tailored to the context of specific patients or situations, including calculations for complex drug regimens.

●      Addresses issues of co-existing medical diseases and conditions such as renal and hepatic impairment, and concurrent medications.

●      Applies sound professional judgement to complex clinical issues and dilemmas, particularly where definitive information is lacking.

●      Participates in pharmacy practice research and clinical audit.

●      If a prescriber, prescribes within area of competence. Work towards attaining an Independent Prescriber qualification if not a prescriber.