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Job summary

Main area
Pharmacy Manufacturing
Grade
NHS AfC: Band 8b
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
196-LIS9991D
Employer
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
St Thomas' Hospital
Town
London
Salary
£72,921 - £83,362 p.a. inc HCA
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
06/11/2025 23:59

Employer heading

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust logo

Accountable Pharmacist – St Thomas’ Cancer Aseptic Services

NHS AfC: Band 8b

Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.

Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.

Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions. 

Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.

In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.

We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.

Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.

The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.

We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.



Job overview

We are looking for a highly motivated and experienced Pharmacist to take on this new, exciting and developing role of Accountable Pharmacist for Cancer services based at the St Thomas' site. You will join a project team involved with the build and validation of a brand new aseptic unit for chemotherapy and ATMPs and once opened, you will lead this new St Thomas' Cancer aseptic unit. You will be responsible for managing unit capacity, quality systems and supply performance and need to ensure the unit can meet effectively prioritises its resources to maximum patient benefit.

You will be experienced in aseptic processing and be able to demonstrate how you have lead and motivated a production team managing demand, resource and quality in a robust manner. You will have expert knowledge and experience of GMP and be able to inspire and ensure regulatory compliance across your teams through expert knowledge, leadership and effective communication. Previous knowledge and experience of handling advanced therapies is desirable

Reflecting on your previous experience, you will be able to identify areas of development and opportunity within our service and communicate and champion these to your staff and wider Trust management

Its an exciting time to join aseptic services at Guy's & St Thomas with aseptic estates development planned over the next 5 years and increased demand for clinical trials, cancer treatments, CIVAS and advanced therapies.

Main duties of the job

·    To be the Accountable Pharmacist for aseptic preparation and dispensing of medicines from the St Thomas' Cancer Aseptic unit

·           To oversee and monitor the unit capacity plan and ensure activities are within the safe working levels of the unit. To implement and escalate contingency plans

·       To oversee the Quality Management system, monitoring metrics and enact and escalate contingency plans reporting at the monthly and quality management meeting

·       To oversee the management of RADAR reports and identification, escalation and management of risk.

·       To lead and be responsible for the delivery of clinical trials requiring aseptic preparation from the St Thomas' Cancer Aseptic unit for GSTT and commercial sponsored trials.

·       To lead on changes within the unit to progress the service development and review of new products and requests in conjunction with the Associate Chief Pharmacist.

·       To develop a team with the required knowledge and expertise to deliver advanced therapies to Trust patients.

Working for our organisation

Guy's & St Thomas' Technical Services is split across a number of sites and involves around 140 staff working in licensed manufacturing and named patient dispensing areas. Services include sterile and non sterile manufacturing, clinical trials, quality control and quality assurance as well aseptic preparation of CIVAS and chemotherapy. 

There is a wide range of expertise throughout the department and many opportunities to  learn and develop from technical experts.

The Trust is going through an Aseptic Transformation programme to develop its on site and off site aseptic facilities to ensure patient need can be met over the next 10-15 years

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Main duties are:

  • Professional leadership
  • Aseptic processing, capacity and contingency management
  • Service evaluation and management
  • Quality systems and risk management
  • Workforce management, training and development
  • Audit
  • Clinical trials
  • Strategic development

 

Person specification

knowledge, skills and abilities

Essential criteria
  • Demonstrated ability to undertake the day to day leadership, management, motivation and appraisal of staff

Skills, knowledge, ability

Essential criteria
  • Demonstrated practical knowledge of GCP, GMP, QA and all current regulations to enable operation at a highest level of practice
  • Demonstrated ability to investigate deviations, identify levels of risk, identify root cause and develop effective corrective and preventative actions
  • Demonstrated ability to reliably evaluate risk and escalate and communicate appropriately

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Previous assessable experience of effectively managing and leading an aseptic unit
  • Experience of managing change and deviations within a pharmaceutical quality management system
  • Previous assessable experience of managing workload and capacity and prioritising activity to ensure safe working levels
  • Previous assessable experience of identifying need, developing and expanding a production service in collaboration with clinical teams and in response to service and patient needs
  • Previous assessable experience of the design, installation and qualification of new production facilities and equipment
Desirable criteria
  • Experience of aseptic processing of advanced therapy products

qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Competency assessed and examined professional registration as a pharmacist or technician with the GPhC.
  • Specialist higher degree (Masters) in technical services (eg National course in Pharmaceutical Technology & Quality Assurance MSc) or equivalent experience
  • Registered Pharmacist with General Pharmaceutical council
  • Mandatory CPD to maintain fitness to practice.
Desirable criteria
  • Management qualification

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Timewise helps businesses to attract and develop the best talent through flexible working.Care quality commission - GoodDisability confident employer

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Saira Hussein / Paul Tunstell
Job title
Aseptic Services Manager
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
020718885055
Additional information

Please do contact for informal chats or visits

 

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