Senior Clinical Pharmacist - Primary and Acute Care

Overview

We are seeking an enthusiastic, patient-focused, independently motivated pharmacist to cover 12 months maternity within our Integrated Care Home team working across Northumberland, based with the Wansbeck hub.

We provide a proactive and collaborative, high quality medicines optimisation service for frail elderly patients in care homes, working closely with colleagues in health and social care across both the primary and secondary care sectors.

We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed, covering one of the largest geographical areas of any NHS trust in the country. Leading in innovation and quality – opening a state‑of‑the‑art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England.

• Provide an opportunity to undertake a mix of face‑to‑face, patient-centred consultations and telephone support to patients, family members and carers as well as involvement with multidisciplinary team meetings, care home visits and ward rounds.
• Work within professional boundaries to provide person‑centred, evidence‑based structured medication reviews for care home residents to ensure appropriate, cost‑effective and safe provision of medicines.
• Targeted review of care home residents and frail elderly patients in their own homes to help minimise risk at transfer of care including those patients who have recurrent falls, complex polypharmacy, swallowing difficulties and those taking high‑risk medicines.
• Close working with the multi‑disciplinary team, which is likely to include attendance at care home MDT meetings, interacting with a wide variety of health/social care professionals including GPs, community nurses/matrons, care home staff, specialist secondary care consultants (e.g., geriatricians, Parkinson’s disease specialists), the old age psychiatry team, and pharmacy colleagues in community pharmacy, GP practices and the hospital setting.
• Clinical leadership and support for a team of integrated care home technicians.
• Provision of expert advice, information and recommendations on medicines and prescribing.
• Promote safe and effective use of medicines, minimise waste and reduce medicines‑related incidents/errors.
• Undertake risk management and clinical governance activities within own assigned areas of responsibility.
• Participate in medical and other ward rounds as well as multi‑disciplinary team meetings as appropriate.
• Role model compassionate and inclusive care for our care home residents including using your clinical skills to carry out structured medication reviews and medicines optimisation; improve safety and quality with regards to medications in line with local and national policies; and reduce inappropriate prescribing in these often‑complex patients with a strong emphasis on shared decision making with residents/family members.
• Facilitate secondment processes by ensuring appropriate approval from your current manager and completion of required documentation before an application is submitted.

• Experienced pharmacist with a clinical diploma or equivalent clinical pharmacy experience.
• Non‑medical prescribing qualification desirable.

• The postholder would be based at Wansbeck, covering the Blyth locality to support the Blyth/Central established team.
• We reserve the right to close this vacancy prior to the closing date once the required number of suitable applications have been received.
• Please read 'applicant guidance notes' before submitting your application.