Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Patient Services

• To support the Senior Pharmacist, Patient Services to ensure the provision of an efficient, safe, and legal dispensing service and deputise in their absence.
• To contribute to the maintenance and development of dispensary policies, procedures and standards and ensure that all staff are aware of their responsibilities within them.
• Participate in the development of systems for service provision in Inpatient Dispensary, which enhance efficiency in order to improve TTA turnaround time, improve accuracy and support staff development.
• Participate in the development of systems for service provision in Outpatient Dispensary, which enhance efficiency in order to reduce waiting times, improve patient experience and ensure smooth workflow.
• Provide outpatient pharmacy service according to Trust turnaround times.
• Liaise with outpatient clinics and relevant lead pharmacists to resolve clinical unit issues and support the junior pharmacist with outpatient work management.
• Effectively respond to informal or verbal complaints in the first instance before appropriate referral to more senior staff where appropriate.
• Participate in dispensary audits in order to ensure that professional standards are achieved in the dispensary.
• Further develop expertise, managerial and clinical skills by working to objectives agreed with the Senior Pharmacists, Patient Services.
• To assist in the co-ordination of the day to day working of both inpatient and outpatient dispensaries.
• To be responsible for the clinical pharmacist oversight and management of Patient Services in the absence of the Patient Services Manager in both inpatient and outpatient dispensaries.
• To be responsible for the accurate clinical screening and final checking of medicines including oral chemotherapy, HIV and clinical trials.

Pharmacy Discharge Coordination

• To work closely with the Senior Pharmacists, Patient Services in order to support dispensary input into Discharge procedures.
• To support the Trust and pharmacy department to improve discharge processes for patients on medication.
• To represent pharmacy for projects designed to improve the discharge process, both within the department, the Trust and across the interface.
• To work closely with consultants and the multidisciplinary teams to plan for the provision of medicines (including transcribing medicines where applicable) prior to discharge.
• To take steps to ensure that patients understand the purpose of their medicines and deal with any practical issues that may prevent optimal use of their medicines through effective counselling.
• To liaise with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to develop and support interface pharmaceutical discharge initiatives where necessary.

General Clinical Practice

• To provide a specialist clinical pharmacy service to patients within Care of the Elderly and Medical wards
• Liaise and work closely with the senior clinical pharmacy team to develop clinical pharmacy services to the Division including ward pharmacy and medicines management.
• Aim to provide safe, clinically effective and cost efficient use of drugs in the patients as allocated.
• Make appropriate referrals where necessary; ensure the clear and effective communication of patients’ pharmaceutical needs to other pharmacists and health care professionals both within the trust and in other health care environments.
• Demonstrate and apply general pharmaceutical knowledge, and where applicable, specialist clinical pharmacy knowledge in core areas in order to plan, manage, monitor and review therapeutic programmes for patients allocated, thereby ensuring the quality of patient care.
• Participate in ward rounds to integrate into the multidisciplinary team and raise the pharmacy profile via contributions at consultant level.
• Demonstrate appropriate clinical reasoning and judgement.
• Work across traditional boundaries, including the transcription of discharge medication.
• Be readily available and keen to answer any general medicine related pharmaceutical queries from patients, pharmacists and other members of staff within pharmacy as well as from other health care professionals including medical staff.

Leadership

• Act as a role model for junior pharmacists and trainee pharmacists in the rotation.
• Promote best practice e.g. evidence-based practice through prescription monitoring.
• Implement and/or follow agreed clinical governance initiatives such as incident/error reporting and investigation.

Management of service

• Ensure national and local agendas are delivered.
• Follow and conform to relevant standards of care.
• Identify and manage risks in relation to medicines use according to policy/protocol.
• Delegate duties / responsibilities appropriately to junior staff.
• Evaluate the performance of junior staff against identified criteria using departmental/Trust IPR tools and General Level Competence Framewor

Evaluation of Service

• Monitor clinical pharmacy in order to ensure safe, clinically effective and cost efficient use of drugs in these patients.
• Document the workload and quality of pharmacy services in line with departmental and corporate objectives.
• Perform audits of drug usage within the Directorate as part of the multi-disciplinary audit process, based on national and service priorities e.g. NICE, CLAHRC research and locally agreed requirements.

Research and Service Development

• Demonstrate a critical approach towards pharmacy practice.
• Integrate research evidence into practice.
• Actively seek to improve the ward and clinical services provided.
• Undertake and participate in pharmacy practice research in accordance with the Collaboration for Leadership and Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) agenda and other relevant studies.

        Education and Training

• Participate in the training and supervision of junior pharmacists and trainee pharmacists in providing a clinical pharmacy service.
• Identify training needs of junior staff in order to undertake their required roles.
• Develop strategies to meet the training needs of staff.
• Provide education and training to pharmacy and other staff.
• Evaluate the training provided.
• Participate in the clinical training of medical and nursing staff.
• Identify own training needs and maintain a portfolio of practice.
• Participate in the Departmental Education and Training Programme and ensure that a written record of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is maintained for review at appraisal.

Supervisory and training responsibilities

Manage the Medicines Management Technician input on the allocated wards. This includes training, supervision, performance review and assessment

Please review the attached job description & person specification for the detailed job description.