Lead Clinical Pharmacist

Job summary
Hatters Health PCN is looking for a passionate and innovative leader for our friendly, dynamic clinical pharmacy team. The appropriate candidate will have the ambition and commitment to provide high quality care to patients, and a passion for clinical, team and personal development.

Main duties of the job

• To lead and mentor the pharmacy team, support clinical decision-making and contribute to competency assessment, supervision and professional development
• To provide operational leadership for medicines reconciliation, prescribing queries, electronic repeat dispensing and shared-care arrangements.
• To promote medication safety, respond to medicines alerts and ensure appropriate monitoring for high-risk therapies.
• To help to translate national and local priorities into effective practice
• To deliver structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation for patients, including those with long-term conditions, high-risk medicines or complex needs.
• To run patient-facing clinics and provide care by telephone, face to face, including domiciliary or care-home visits where required.
• To lead audits, searches, quality-improvement work, policies and protocols, using data to monitor impact and report progress.
• To Work closely with GPs, nurses, practice managers, community pharmacy, hospital teams, the ICB, INT and other partners to improve pathways and patient outcomes
• To support PCN DES and Neighbourhood priorities, CQC readiness, public-health initiatives, health equity and consistent ways of working across member practices.
• To oversee key medicines related programmes

About us
Hatters Health PCN is a successful, innovative and friendly PCN with 5 member practices, situated in North West Luton. We pride ourself on providing a positive and collaborative atmosphere where everyone works together for the benefit of our population and our staff. We are a very friendly, supportive organisation which genuinely values learning and development and as such were the first PCN in BLMK to be recognised as a training organisation. Our pharmacy team benefit from regular tutorials and clinical supervision.

Job responsibilities
Summary: To provide leadership and development for the PCN pharmacy team whilst continuing to deliver high quality, patient-centred clinical care.

Role:

• To lead and mentor the pharmacy team, support clinical decision-making and contribute to competency assessment, supervision and professional development
• To provide operational leadership for medicines reconciliation, prescribing queries, electronic repeat dispensing and shared-care arrangements.
• To promote medication safety, respond to medicines alerts and ensure appropriate monitoring for high-risk therapies.
• To help to translate national and local priorities into effective practice
• To deliver structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation for patients, including those with long-term conditions, high-risk medicines or complex needs.
• To run patient-facing clinics and provide care by telephone, face to face, including domiciliary or care-home visits where required.
• To lead audits, searches, quality-improvement work, policies and protocols, using data to monitor impact and report progress.
• To Work closely with GPs, nurses, practice managers, community pharmacy, hospital teams, the ICB, INT and other partners to improve pathways and patient outcomes
• To support PCN DES and Neighbourhood priorities, CQC readiness, public-health initiatives, health equity and consistent ways of working across member practices.
• To oversee key medicines related programmes

Responsibilities:
Clinical
Provide advanced clinical pharmacy input including:

• Structured Medication Reviews for complex patients
• Long-term condition management (e.g. hypertension, asthma, diabetes)
• Medicines reconciliation post-discharge
• Antimicrobial stewardship and prescribing safety.

Provide expert clinical advice to GPs and other healthcare professionals on safe, evidence-based and cost-effective prescribing

In collaboration with colleagues such as GPs, Nurses and Healthcare Assistants, be aware of the holistic needs of the patient and adapt therapy where appropriate

Address the day-to-day issues raised by patients / staff in relation to medicines management and escalate / investigate / prevent recurrence as necessary

Competently manage and undertake patient clinics, organising workload and processes around this to ensure timely patient follow-ups and medicine optimisation.

Work collaboratively with MDTs to ensure seamless integration of pharmacy into patient pathways.

Leadership & Management:
Line Manage, mentor and support the pharmacy workforce, ensuring role clarity, supervision, appraisal and continuing continuous professional development (CPD).

Champion a culture of continuous improvement, mentoring and shared learning.

Engage in the recruitment, conduct or performance management of Pharmacy Team members, with the support of the PCN Manager

Take responsibility for own development, learning and performance and demonstrating skills and activities to others who are undertaking similar work.

Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential

• Completion of a Masters in Pharmacy and registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council
• Completion of CPPE
• Completion of IP qualification

Desirable

• Leadership qualification or experience

Experience
Essential

• Significant experience in a clinical pharmacist role in primary care.
• Experience managing or supervising pharmacy staff.
• Knowledge of PCN DES, NHS Long Term Plan and national prescribing guidance (e.g. NICE, NHSE).
• In-depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence-based healthcare, medicine optimisation, polypharmacy and therapeutics.
• Proven involvement in service development or quality improvement initiatives.
• Understanding of clinical governance, audit, risk management and incident reporting.

Desirable

• Involvement in achieving PCN DES, QOF or IIF targets.
• Experience in developing and implementing clinical governance frameworks.

Personal
Essential

• Ability to lead and manage clinical and operation aspects of pharmacy services.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills; able to influence and collaborate effectively.
• Patient-centred approach with a commitment to reducing health inequalities.
• Pro-active, self-motivated and committed to CPD.
• Excellent understanding of data protection and confidentiality issues.
• Flexible and adaptable to changing priorities and service needs.

Desirable

• Experience of Systm0ne clinical records

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.
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).