Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Job Purpose:
•    To deliver a comprehensive clinical pharmacy service to the Lambeth Home Treatment Team (LHTT) and Maudsley Hospital in line with Trust policies, procedures, and standards.

•    To have medicines related consultations with patients and carers; involve patients in treatment decisions; improve patient and carer satisfaction with information they receive about medicines.

•    To support the multidisciplinary LHTT and Maudsley inpatient and community mental health teams to use medicines safely and effectively and reduce medicines wastage through medicines optimisation and quality improvement programmes, and by providing medicines related training.
•    To support the LHTT and Maudsley inpatient units/community mental health teams to use medicines safely and effectively and reduce medicines wastage.
•    To implement medicines optimisation and quality improvement programmes in the teams.
•    To act as a practice supervisor in the training and education of trainee pharmacists and junior pharmacists.
•    To prescribe medicines to service users within competence and agreed management plans.

•    To partake in the pharmacy on-call service (Emergency Duty Cover, bank holiday rotas) and a Saturday service at the Maudsley Hospital site.

Key Responsibilities: 
1.    To ensure safe and effective use of medicines at Home Treatment Team, ward, community mental health teams, and dispensary level to ensure safe and effective use of medicines. This includes adhering to Trust policies, pharmacy procedures, local and national guidelines, and legal requirements.
2.    To be responsible for providing clinical pharmacy input as part of the multidisciplinary team (MDT). This will include providing advice to clinicians on medicines, including the use of unlicensed medicines use and areas of practice where the evidence base is lacking, liaising with the medicines information pharmacists where appropriate.
3.    To be responsible for providing a clinical pharmacy service to groups of patients
a.    Ensure effective outcomes of treatment with medicines
b.    Support the teams to monitor patients for potential and actual adverse effects of their medicines 
c.    Support patients after discharge from hospital, which may include telephone consultation or face-to-face follow-up appointments where appropriate
d.    Undertake medicines-related consultations with patients and carers
e.    Take steps to ensure patients understand the purpose of their medicines and deal with any practical issues that may prevent the optimal use of their medicines. 
4.    To assess medicine regimes both during enquiry answering and/or through referral, providing highly specific advice to other clinical team members on the management of often complex medicine related issues, such as complex drug interactions, high dose antipsychotic prescribing, unlicensed use of medicines etc. 
5.    To prescribe medicines within their scope of practice and in line with Trust policy if qualified and registered with the GPhC as an independent pharmacist prescriber.
6.    To be able to present information in a suitable format (e.g. written and/or verbal) and style for the target audience. Barriers to effective communication may include learning disability, mental impairment, non-consenting/noncompliant patients, and patients detained under the mental health act who may be violent/aggressive.
7.    To provide information in a timely manner, to the appropriate individual (in accordance with the degree of urgency of the request or issue identified). 
8.    To prepare and deliver training for clinical staff (e.g. nurses, support workers, junior doctors) on a wide range of medicines-related issues. To provide clinical supervision to a team of pharmacists as part of a group.
9.    To support local implementation of Trust Medicines Management Policies within own clinical area, and ensure medicines are handled safely and securely within designated clinical areas. 
10.    To record and collect data on patient and service outcomes and report these to relevant committees on a regular basis.
11.    To identify and undertake project work in order to make improvements within own clinical area.  
12.    To participate in and develop quality improvement initiatives, undertake local and national audits, and engage in research and medicines evaluation as required by the Chief Pharmacist