Clinical Pharmacist

Do you enjoy making a difference for patients whilst being part of a dedicated and highly motivated team of professionals? You will work and be based in a great part of the country with access to an array of experiences and connections.

Cheltenham Peripheral PCN is an established team working within 5 GP Practices that wrap themselves around the town of Cheltenham and the neighbouring communities.

We pride ourselves on being creative, caring and innovative, a motivated group of GP's and Health Care Professionals, one of our top priorities include Our People, it is important for us to support and grow our staff, providing opportunities to work independently and develop in new areas of interest.

We are looking for an individual with character, compassion, empathy and a desire to succeed, balanced with a good clinical and pharmaceutical knowledge eager for a new challenge.

We welcome applicants from hospital, community or primary care background. Consideration given to newly qualified pharmacists and pre-registration Pharmacists due to qualify Summer 2025.

This position offers the potential to develop a long term career in a Primary Care environment. Whilst prescribing experience is desirable we are willing to recruit pharmacists without the IP qualification as they can develop through the CPPE Pathway.

The job purpose is to fulfil the requirements of the PCN DES contract by:

• Working with the practices to ensure that medicines management is optimised to achieve highly effective, safe and patient centred prescribing.
• Undertaking telephone-based and face to face patient consultations, reviewing patients with potential medication issues and long term conditions. This will include Structured Medication Reviews (SMR) and de‑prescribing within the context of polypharmacy and frailty.
• Working with Care Homes in Multidisciplinary Teams (MDT) to optimise the medicines management of residents

The existing pharmacy team supports 5 GP practices located on the edge of Cheltenham - Leckhampton, Charlton Kings, Bishop's Cleeve and Winchcombe. The combined patient population is 54,000.

The role will report directly to the Lead. The Lead in turn is accountable to the PCN's Clinical Director who is a GP at one of the practices.

The practices enjoy a very good working relationship. Communication is strong and regular meetings are held to encourage the sharing of ideas and to plan projects. We are keen to develop and train our staff.

Management of medicines at discharge from hospital

To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care andinto care homes; identify and rectify unexplained changes; manage these changeswithout referral to the GP; perform a clinical medication review; produce apost-discharge medicines care plan including dose titration and booking of follow-uptests, and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge. Set up and manage systems toensure continuity of medicines supply to high-risk groups of patients (e.g.those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).

Work in partnership with hospital colleagues (e.g. care of the elderly doctors and clinical pharmacists) to proactively manage patients at high risk of medicine related problems before they are discharged to ensure continuity of care.

Design,development and implementation of computer searches to identify cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines. Responsibility for management ofrisk stratification tools on behalf of the practice. Working with patients andthe primary care team to minimise risks through medicines optimisation.

Unplanned hospital admissions

Devise and implement practice searches to identify cohorts of patients most likely to beat risk of an unplanned admission and readmissions from medicines. Work withcase managers, multidisciplinary (health and social care) review teams,hospital colleagues and virtual ward teams to manage medicines-related risk forreadmission and patient harm. Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing ofthese medicines to highriskpatient groups.

Repeat prescribing

Review, update and implement a practice repeat prescribingpolicy. Manage the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewingpatient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reachingreview dates; make necessary changes as an independent prescriber, and ensure patients are booked in for necessary monitoring tests where required.

Telephone and patient facing medicines support

Provide a telephone help line for patients withquestions, queries and concerns about their medicines. Hold clinics for patients requiring face to face clinical medication reviews (CMRs) i.e. areview of the ongoing need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs andan opportunity to support patients with their medicine taking.

Medication review

Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients with multi-morbidity and…