Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To work with the Chief Pharmacist and a team of clinical pharmacists and technicians to provide and support the integrated delivery of pharmaceutical care initiatives to patients with mental and physical health needs and learning disabilities in identified areas of HPFT to ensure safe, appropriate and cost-effective use of medicines.
• To provide highly specialist pharmaceutical advice concerning the care and treatment of service users in Mental Health (including Forensics) and Learning Disabilities Services and to promote safe, effective and evidence based cost effective use of medicines within the Trust.
• To actively lead the provision and development of pharmaceutical services to a specific division.
• To provide highly specific advice to clinical team members on the management of complex medicines related issues, such as complex drug interactions, medicines use in pregnancy, unlicensed/off-label use of medicines etc.
• To provide and receive highly complex, highly sensitive or highly contentious information, where developed persuasive, motivational, negotiating, training, empathetic or re-assurance skills are required. This may be because agreement or co-operation is required or because there are barriers to understanding. This may also involve presenting complex, sensitive or contentious information to a large group of staff, service users or carers.
• To work as part of a multidisciplinary team to provide clinical pharmaceutical support to designated areas in order to maximise benefits and minimise risk to service users. This will include medicines reconciliation, prescription review, medication reviews, identification and management of drug interactions and adverse effects, advice on clinical monitoring, medicines information, advising on supply problems, compliance with legislation, compliance with Trust policies and guidelines and participation in multidisciplinary team meetings where appropriate.
• To support the pharmacy service for clinical trials.
• Participate in relevant quality improvement (QI) projects to support service improvements and learning and development.
• To be responsible for effective operation, monitoring and feedback of the Trust Medicines Policy, Strategy for Pharmacy and Medicines Optimisation, Trust Medicines Formulary, New Drugs Policy, NICE Guidance and other policies and guidelines approved locally by the Trust Drugs & Therapeutics Committee, and also those agreed across the wider health economy medicines and prescribing committee.
• To develop, plan and complete and evaluate audits to ensure safe and secure storage and handling of medicines in trust units within the locality according to Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Professional Guidance on the Safe and Secure Handling of Medicines (Royal Pharmaceutical Society) and the Medicines Act.
• To be responsible for the teaching/delivery of education and training in Medicines Optimisation for all healthcare professionals working in HPFT.
• To prepare critical appraisal reports when required for managed entry of new medicines or new or existing treatments for consideration by the Drugs & Therapeutics Committee or health economy wide medicines committees. This may involve presenting a range of options and using evidence based medicine as well as judgement regarding highly complex facts or situations.
• To carry out medication reviews and provide a clinical pharmacy service and pharmaceutical advice and support to designated mental health or learning disabilities units or teams within the remit of HPFT. These reviews will support clinicians preparing care plans for individual service users.
• To provide pharmaceutical support with local medicines policy writing, development and review, dealing with supply problems and offering solutions etc.
• To develop standard operating procedures and policies to further the safe and effective management of medicines for the benefit of service users accessing mental health services.
• To monitor drug expenditure reports and provide advice to prescribers and managers on more cost effective use of medicines. To provide advice to the Finance Department on budget setting and horizon scanning of new drugs in development.
• To support and participate in medication incident investigation.
• To review medication incident reports and contribute to systems learning from analysis of these events.  The post holder will be responsible for presenting a quarterly safety report to designated groups.
• To attend relevant team meetings / committees relevant to the area assigned to you.
• To review the risk management policies relating to medicines as required by the service.
• To provide education on medicines to individual service users and carers or groups as required. This may require the management of certain situations very sensitively and to ensure the service users rights to privacy, independence, confidentiality and dignity are maintained at all times. Service users and where appropriate their carers should be empowered to make informed choices about their care and participate in the planning of that care.
• To communicate with, and form working relationships with pharmacists and technicians employed by other NHS Trusts, where they are working within HPFT Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Units under a Service Level Agreement.
• To provide medicines information advice when appropriate and to refer when necessary to the Medicines Information Pharmacist employed under the Service Level Agreement with the Acute Trust.
• To plan, execute, evaluate and report audits of medicines use, the medicines optimisation process, the operation of policies and procedures relating to medicines and risk management processes in the Trust, including national audits e.g. POMH-UK by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
• To develop and implement policies, protocols and guidelines including Patient Group Directions and to set up education and training programmes to support these.
• To participate in the appraisals and supervision of staff as required.
• To provide dispensary cover as required.
• To take part in weekend, bank holiday and on-call rotas, as required.
• To participate with the annual stock take.
• To appreciate and support developments  in  a changing NHS, for example 7 day working
• To carry out other duties with the agreement of the post holder and the Chief Pharmacist.

For a more detailed description, please see attached job description and person specification.