Principal Clinical Pharmacist Mental Health - Division Leads

Job overview

We are seeking two experienced and motivated clinical pharmacists to join our pharmacy team as Division Lead Pharmacists (Band 8a).

Our Division Lead Pharmacists provide senior clinical leadership across the following divisions: Adult Acute and Urgent Care Services; Specialist Services (Children and Young People and Older People); Learning Disabilities and Forensic Services; and Adult Community Services. Our two current vacancies are within the the CAMHS, Perinatal Mental Health Service and Mother & Babys Unit role will be for a period up to 12 months before being reallocated elsewhere.

These are senior leadership roles within the Pharmacy and Medicines Optimisation Team, providing strategic, clinical and operational leadership across a diverse portfolio of specialist services. The post holders will lead the development and delivery of high-quality, evidence-based and patient-centred pharmacy services, ensuring the safe and effective use of medicines across both inpatient and community settings.

The successful candidates will work closely with senior clinicians, managers and multidisciplinary teams to influence prescribing practice, improve patient outcomes and drive medicines optimisation initiatives across the service.

This is an excellent opportunity for pharmacists looking to progress their career within specialist mental health services whilst contributing to innovative service development and quality improvement programmes.

Main duties of the job

As a Division Lead Pharmacist, you will provide highly specialist clinical pharmacy expertise in mental health, learning disabilities and forensic services

You will lead and develop pharmacy services across the assigned division, ensuring high-quality, evidence-based and cost-effective medicines use

• Provide highly specialist clinical pharmacy expertise in mental health, learning disabilities and forensic services
• Lead and develop pharmacy services across assigned divisions, ensuring high-quality, evidence-based and cost-effective medicines use
• Influence prescribing practice and contribute to Trust-wide medicines optimisation strategy and governance
• Use Independent Prescribing skills (where qualified) within agreed scopes and Trust policy
• Support medicines safety through incident review, learning, audit and quality improvement initiatives
• Line manage and develop Band 6/7 pharmacists and other pharmacy staff, fostering a strong learning culture
• Deliver and oversee education and training for pharmacists, technicians and wider healthcare professionals
• Contribute to policy development, formulary management and Trust committees (e.g. Drugs & Therapeutics)
• Work collaboratively across services and systems to support safe and seamless transfer of car

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To work with the Chief Pharmacist and a team of clinical pharmacists and technicians to provide and support the integrated delivery of pharmaceutical care initiatives to patients with mental and physical health needs and learning disabilities in identified areas of HPFT to ensure safe, appropriate and cost-effective use of medicines.
• To provide highly specialist pharmaceutical advice concerning the care and treatment of service users in Mental Health (including Forensics) and Learning Disabilities Services and to promote safe, effective and evidence-based cost effective use of medicines within the Trust.
• To actively lead the provision and development of pharmaceutical services to a specific division.
• To provide highly specific advice to clinical team members on the management of complex medicines related issues, such as complex drug interactions, medicines use in pregnancy, unlicensed/off-label use of medicines etc.
• To provide and receive highly complex, highly sensitive or highly contentious information, where developed persuasive, motivational, negotiating, training, empathetic or re-assurance skills are required. This may be because agreement or co-operation is required or because there are barriers to understanding. This may also involve presenting complex, sensitive or contentious information to a large group of staff, service users or carers.
• To work as part of a multidisciplinary team to provide clinical pharmaceutical support to designated areas in order to maximise benefits and minimise risk to service users. This will include medicines reconciliation, prescription review, medication reviews, identification and management of drug interactions and adverse effects, advice on clinical monitoring, medicines information, advising on supply problems, compliance with legislation, compliance with Trust policies and guidelines and participation in multidisciplinary team meetings where appropriate.

For a more detailed description, please see attached job description and person specification or contact Akrem Mohammed akrem.mohammed@nhs.net or Seema Vekaria seema.vekaria@nhs.net

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.