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The post holder will work directly with multi-disciplinary teams to improve clinical effectiveness and person‑centred outcomes. The role will be based within the GP member practices providing support to the GPs and other healthcare professionals within the teams to improve the health of patients through the rational and safe use of medicines. The post holder will contribute to the efficient working of the PCN team by leading on key areas in relation to medicines optimisation. The role will include face‑to‑face and remote patient contact, as well as liaison with colleagues in community pharmacy, care homes and secondary care.

For further information about the role or an informal discussion, please contact Kathryn Kyle Kathryn.kyle@nhs.net

Salary: Based on AfC Band 7 (dependent on experience): £47,810-£54,810 per annum

• Todevelop and facilitate a good working relationship with community pharmacists and other local providers of healthcare.
• Toliaise effectively with other health care teams concerned with the patient care as appropriate and with all other disciplines within the practice.
• Toplan and organise own workload, including audit and project work, and training sessions for members of the medicines management team, practice team, community pharmacy team, community nurse team, patients, carers, etc.
• To ensure that all patient information following consultations, and telephone encounters are recorded accurately on the computer.
• Tomaintain registration as a pharmacist and comply with appropriate professional codes.
• To attend practice and other meetings of relevance as required.
• Participate in the induction, education and training of new members of practice staff including students where appropriate.
• As appropriate to the post, to maintain and develop professional competence and expertise, keep up to date with medical/therapeutic evidence and opinion and local and national service legislation and policy developments, participate in the appraisal process and agree objectives and a personal development plan.
• Toundertake any other duties commensurate with the post holders grade as agreed with the post holders line manager

Taunton Central Primary Care Network is a relatively new organisation but our five member practices have a strong history of collaborative working to develop the best patient‑centred care and services. The PCN has approximately 66,500 patients registered with four practices in Taunton and one practice in the neighbouring village of Bishops Lydeard. We pride ourselves on our ability and willingness to adopt innovative ways of working that improve patient care and make our PCN a rewarding place to work.

Note: Duties and Areas of Responsibility will vary between the practices according to needs. They may include the following examples:

• See (where appropriate) patients with single or multiple medical problems where medicine optimisation is required.
• Review the on‑going need for each medicine, a review of monitoring needs and an opportunity to support patients with their medicines taking ensuring they get the best use of their medicines.
• Run own long‑term condition clinics where responsible for prescribing as an independent prescriber.

• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for/implement changes in prescribing and monitoring.
• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients/carers and produce recommendations /implement changes in prescribing and monitoring.
• Work with care home staff to improve safety of medicines ordering and administration.

• Undertake clinical medication reviews with patients and produce recommendations for /implement changes in prescribing and monitoring.
• Attend and refer patients to multidisciplinary case conferences.

• Provide patient facing clinics for those with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

• Managing caseload of patients with common/minor/self‑limiting ailments while working within a scope of practice and limits of competence.
• Signposting to community pharmacy and referring to GPs or other healthcare professionals where appropriate.

• Provide a telephone help line for patients with questions, queries and concerns about their medicines.

• Answers relevant medicine‑related enquiries from GPs, other practice staff, other healthcare teams (e.g. community pharmacy) and patients with queries about medicines.
• Suggesting and recommending solutions.
• Providing follow up for patients to monitor the effect of any changes.

• Review the use of medicines most commonly associated with unplanned hospital admissions and readmissions through audit and individual patient reviews.
• Put in place changes to reduce the prescribing of these medicines to high risk patient groups.

• To reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes, including identifying and rectifying unexplained changes and working with patients, dispensers and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge.
• Set up and manage systems to ensure continuity of medicines supply to high‑risk groups of patients (e.g. those with medicine compliance aids or those in care homes).

• Ensure that patients are referred to the appropriate healthcare professional for the appropriate level of care within an appropriate period of time e.g. pathology results, common/minor ailments, acute conditions, long‑term condition reviews, etc.

• Support the repeat prescribing reauthorisation process by reviewing patient requests for repeat prescriptions and reviewing medicines reaching review dates and flagging up those needing a review.
• Support the development of repeat dispensing services where appropriate.
• Ensure patients have appropriate monitoring tests in place.
• Identification of cohorts of patients at high risk of harm from medicines through pre‑prepared practice computer searches. This might include risks that are patient related, medicine related, or both.

• Analyse, interpret and present medicines data to highlight issues and risks to support decision making.
• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing to identify areas for improvement independently or in collaboration with colleagues. Present results & provide leadership on suggested change.
• Contribute to local & national research initiatives.
• Implement changes to medicines that result from MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local and national guidance.

• Monitor practice prescribing against the local health economy's RAG list and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed by hospital doctors (red drugs) or subject to shared care (amber drugs).
• Assist practices in maintaining a practice formulary that is hosted on the practices computer system.
• Auditing practices compliance against NICE technology assessment guidance.
• Provide newsletters or bulletins on important prescribing messages.

• Provide education and training to primary healthcare team & visiting students on therapeutics and medicines optimisation.

• Work with the general practice team to ensure the practice is compliant with CQC standards where medicines are involved.

• To support public health campaigns.
• To provide specialist knowledge on all public health programmes available to the general public.

• Contribute to all GMS, PCN Network DES, QOF, DSQS contract work.

• Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council
• Membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• Clinical diploma in Independent prescriber
• A member of or working towards Faculty membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society

• Minimum of 2 years post‑qualification experience
• An appreciation of the nature of GPs and general practices
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improving prescribing
• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information
• In depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge and understanding of the principles of evidence‑based healthcare

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.