Lead Clinical Pharmacist

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To organise and develop clinical pharmacy services within designated patient populations.
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  The designated population will be a primary care network, Directorate service or other population/cohort across Newcastle geography of a similar size (e.g. care home residents or the frail population). Responsibilities include building and developing relationships between local community pharmacies and other NHS services.
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  To promote the safe, rational and cost effective use of medicines by working closely with colleagues from all disciplines within the designated patient population to share good practice and change prescribing behaviours where necessary.
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  To perform the professional role of a registered pharmacist, including advice, supervision and co-operation with colleagues. 
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  Perform the professional role of a registered Independent Prescriber (NonMedical Prescriber) including prescribing and de-prescribing within the individual’s scope of competence.
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  Provide expertise in structured clinical medicines review and address public health and social needs of patients, regardless of setting. This could be in secondary care, primary care, intermediate care or domiciliary settings as befits the needs of the patients.
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  Run clinics where medicines pay a key role in the management of patients with long term conditions; for example, up titration of heart failure and hypertension medicines when clinically appropriate, reduction of cardiovascular risk, anticoagulation, management of chronic lung diseases.
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  Help patients to meet their health goals, reduce inappropriate poly-pharmacy and unnecessary medicines waste through structured clinical medication review.
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  Reconcile medicines following transfer between care settings and work with patients and their usual care providers to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post transfer of care.
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  Contribute to reductions in medicine related hospital admissions and 
  readmissions by supporting patients to get the best outcomes from their medicines and identifying and addressing medicines related issues.
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  Interface and collaborate with community pharmacy, medicines optimisation and hospital pharmacy colleagues and develop referral processes between primary care professionals including the promotion of Stock Shortage Protocols and the Repeat Dispensing and New Medicines services.
• Support the development of safe, efficient systems for prescribing and managing medicines within the designated patient population. This can include but is not limited to advising on prescribing workflow and procedures, sharing good practice in and between care settings and promoting the use of facilitative technologies.
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  Manage patients and health care professional’s medicine queries.
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  Collaborate with colleagues in all settings to implement drug withdrawals, shortages and alerts e.g. from the Clinical Commissioning Group or Medicines Health Regulatory Authority aimed at improving medicines safety.
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  Work with other healthcare professionals and patients to implement NICE, Shared Care and other evidence based guidelines.
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  Contribute to multi-morbidity reviews, multidisciplinary reviews and learning from serious incidents and near-misses.
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  Provide medicines information, clinical supervision and training to healthcare professionals and administrative staff working with the designated patient population.
• Review and interpret pathology results for patients in their care.
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  Act as a source of medicines information for healthcare professionals patients and carers (e.g. around doses, side effects, adverse events, possible alternatives e.g. around out of stock medicines).

Please note it is a requirement of The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust that all successful candidates who require a DBS for the post they have been offered pay for their DBS certificate. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first month’s pay.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you.