Specialist Clinical Pharmacist - Clinical & High-cost Medicine

Job summary
An opportunity has arisen for a motivated clinical pharmacist who wish to develop specialist knowledge and skills in high-cost drugs provision across various clinical specialties. You will support the Principal Pharmacist - High-cost drugs in ensuring cost-effective use of this group of medicines excluded from NHS tariff payment system to meet commissioner requirements.

You will have the opportunity to work in a multi-disciplinary setting, liaising with clinicians, specialist nurses, as well as external organisations such as homecare providers to ensure safe, robust management of medicines to meet both clinical and patient needs.

This role will enable you to further utilise your clinical knowledge, developing your influential and critical evaluation skills to drive service improvement.

Throughout our department, we have a very strong team ethos and you will have good support from your peers, the senior pharmacists and technicians. You will work closely with our team of clinical pharmacists. We have successfully implemented electronic prescribing and medicines administration on all our inpatient wards.

Main duties of the job
You will be working within our established high-cost drugs and homecare pharmacy team in the management, monitoring of high-cost medicines prescribing such as biologics. In addition, you will provide pharmaceutical support to clinical areas that are high-users of high-cost drugs which include rheumatology, dermatology, neurology and adult medical day case unit. The role involves medicines advice, cost-impact analysis as well as leading on safe introduction of new high-cost medicines. You will regularly undertake work-based projects, service review, audits and participate in medicines pathway design and medicines optimisation agenda at local and regional level.

You will also be part of the wider clinical pharmacy team that is responsible for the pharmaceutical care of our patients from admission through to discharge. This involves regular ward clinical commitment to enable you to develop close relationships with the wider Pharmacy team. You will be expected to use your prescribing skills as part of your specialist clinical pharmacist role. If you are not already a prescriber, we will support you to achieve this qualification.

About us
Please submit your application as soon as possible, as we reserve the right to close adverts once sufficient applications have been received.We recognise that AI tools can support application writing; however, candidates are asked to keep their use to a minimum. Responses should reflect your own experience, skills and knowledge, as over-reliance on AI-generated content may result in generic answers that do not accurately represent your abilities.University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) brings together Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust. As a group, we are committed to improving services for our communities through collaboration, modernising care delivery and striving for excellence. Working together enables us to share expertise, strengthen services and create greater opportunities, and there may be a requirement to work across sites depending on service needs.Our Excellence Values are Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Integrity and Courage. UHN welcomes applications from all backgrounds and is committed to an inclusive working environment. We are proud signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant and hold the Gold Award under the Employer Recognition Scheme. Candidates who identify as members of the Armed Forces community and meet the essential criteria will be guaranteed an interview.

Job responsibilities
Specialist Clinical Pharmacy Service:

• To provide information, advice and guidance on the safe, effective and economical use of medicines and to challenge poor practice.
• To maintain appropriate standards of service and safety; to develop and enforce guidelines, policies and procedures to ensure standards are met.
• To optimise medicines management by reconciling drug histories, performing medication reviews, counselling, and using patients' own medicines.
• To undertake adverse drug reactions and incident reporting where necessary.
• To record your clinical activity and to monitor the outcome of your advice.
• To participate in best value medicines initiatives pertinent to your area of specialty.
• To lead and support on quality improvement of medicines.
• To implement countywide and local prescribing strategies within the Trust.
• To undertake independent prescribing if/when qualified as Independent Prescriber.
• To facilitate the expansion of the tools within EPMA.
• To support the development and implementations of medicines related guidance, policies and procedures within specialty areas.
• To fulfil the requirements of the Code of Ethics and Standards of Good Professional Practice.
• To implement the Duty of Candour.

Specialist Pharmacist in High-cost Medicine:

• To develop specialist expertise in areas with a high use of medicines excluded from the NHS Payment System ie high-cost drugs.
• To have a working knowledge of current practises and protocols in these specialties.
• To facilitate the development and implementation of high-cost drugs related guidelines.
• To support high-cost drugs and homecare team on the appropriate prescribing, validation and supply of high-cost drugs.
• To lead the auditing of medicines within specialist areas,
• To undertake work-based QI projects with the support of the Principal High-cost drugs pharmacist.
• To undertake data analysis and reporting relating to high-cost drugs to meet the requirements stipulated by commissioners.
• To attend appropriate Directorate meetings to ensure that pharmaceutical issues are considered.

Education, Training and Supervision

• Attend clinical pharmacy team meetings and education/training schemes relevant to post.
• To take part in formal and informal training of pharmacy staff and other healthcare professionals.
• To be a supervisor on the Clinical Pharmacy Diploma course.
• To supervise aspects of pharmacist trainee training.
• 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, discharge and in outpatient clinics regarding treatment and medication to optimise patient concordance.
• 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.
• To develop specialist expertise in chosen speciality area.
• To obtain/maintain prescribing qualification and support speciality clinics and ward rounds as appropriate.
• To help provide the training for Technicians enhanced patient counselling skills and Medicines Management Technician training.

Other Duties:

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

Person Specification
Education, Training and Qualification
Essential

• BPharm or MPharm degree
• Member of General Pharmaceutical Council
• Achieved (or working towards) postgraduate clinical qualification (or equivalent knowledge/experience)
• CPD Portfolio

Desirable

• Member of Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• Practice Certification in Independent Prescribing
• Member of UKCPA, PCPA, or other relevant specialist body
• Medicines Information training

Knowledge and Experience
Essential

• Post-registration hospital clinical pharmacy experience including at least 4 of the following specialties; (Medicine (or medical specialties), Care of the Older Person, Surgery (or surgical specialties), Paediatrics, Medicines Information, Oncololgy/Haematology, Aseptics (this would normally be achieved over at least 2 - 3 year period)
• Experience with working as part of a multidisciplinary team
• Clinical Audit/ QI Service Improvement or practice research experience
• Demonstrates a level of clinical reasoning, problem solving and judgement
• Literature searching and critical appraisal of clinical trials evidence
• Good core clinical knowledge of therapeutics and pharmacology
• Numeracy
• Good interpersonal/excellent communication of highly complex information to a wide variety of audiences
• NHS arrangements, e.g. ICBs, NICE, CQC, Clinical Governance, PCNs, NHS digital
• Teaching, supervising and training staff

Desirable

• Independent prescribing or working towards Independent Prescribing qualification
• Experience in supporting Directorate Pharmacist or equivalent, to include financial reporting, formulary application, guideline writing
• Experience of electronic prescribing and administration systems and electronic patient records
• Staff supervision
• Experience in risk management

Skills
Essential

• Presentation skills
• Ability to work under pressure
• Computer skills, e.g. databases
• Ability to prioritise and delegate
• Ability to work alone or as team member
• Time management
• Excellent communication

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.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).