Job overview

Senior Pharmacist – Medicines Information/Clinical Services (Part time/Full time)

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an enthusiastic Pharmacist to join our friendly and supportive Medicines Information (MI) team within the Pharmacy Department at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH).

You will be responsible for providing a high quality clinical enquiry answering service to healthcare professionals within the Trust and to patients via our established medicines helpline.

Alongside this, you will support the Clinical Pharmacy team by delivering direct patient care at ward level and acting as a clinical role model for other staff.

Main duties of the job

In addition to providing a high quality clinical enquiry answering service, you will be actively involved in training and supporting our junior rotational staff and will have the opportunity to participate in service improvement projects.

The medicines information component of this post will be 0.5 WTE and for the clinical services component, we will consider 0.1 to 0.5 WTE.

You will be an experienced pharmacist with excellent communication and organisational skills and the desire to provide a high quality, safe, effective and efficient service to our patients.

Working for our organisation

Our friendly and supportive Medicines Information team comprises lead pharmacists, senior medicines information pharmacists, rotational band 6 pharmacists and a specialist pharmacy technician.

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the UK’s largest and busiest acute teaching hospital Trusts. We have achieved a national and international reputation for many of our specialist services including stroke, renal, neurosciences, cancer services and trauma and are at the forefront of many research programmes
We want you to be proud to be part of the NUH team.

The pharmacy department is forward thinking and constantly implementing innovative ways of working to deliver the best possible patient care. We continue to extend the ideal model of delivering medicines optimisation and pharmaceutical care where pharmacists are fully integrated into the medical teams, supported by a team of medicines management technicians and assistants.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Medicines Information

Provide evaluated medicines information and advice from a variety of sources including clinical trials and published literature to pharmacy, medical and nursing staff, allied healthcare professionals and members of the public (via the medicines helpline) at all levels to promote the safe, effective, evidence-based and economic use of medicines thus optimising individual patient therapy.

Assist in the production of proactive medicines information aimed at improving prescribing and practice, and therefore patient care both in and outside the pharmacy, through personal communication, memos and bulletins.

In conjunction with the Lead pharmacists, Medicines Information, ensure that all standard operating procedures relating to the provision of medicines information are in place and current and all resources are up to date.

Support the training and development of junior medicines information staff and Lead Technician, Medicines Information and be actively involved in checking and reviewing their enquiries where necessary.

Contribute to a peer review system and assist with the audit of enquiries in accordance with clinical governance requirements.

To support and if necessary represent the Lead pharmacists, Medicines Information in all aspects pertaining to the management of the pharmacy department’s Medicines Information service.

As part of the Medicines Information team, ensure that drug recalls and alerts received into the Trust are dealt with in a timely manner.

Maintain contact with appropriate specialists and groups both nationally and locally to enable best practice to be identified and incorporated into NUH practice.

To support the provision and update of monographs for the NHS Injectable Medicines guide.

Core Clinical duties (3.75-18.75 hours per week)

To ensure safe rational and effective prescribing by undertaking medication reconciliation, assessing suitability of prescribed medication, enabling use of patient’s own medicines and patient self-administration, counselling (to optimise medicines use), and ensuring continuity of patient care into the community.

Providing medicines for individual patients during their stay in hospital, at discharge and also for out-patient visits.

Interpreting and requesting clinical tests to monitor and make recommendations to improve effectiveness of drug therapy.

Pro-actively liaising with other members of the multidisciplinary team (medical staff, nurses, microbiologists, physiotherapists, dieticians) in order to ensure safe use of medicines.

Making recommendations about medicines to improve patient outcomes and to encourage adherence to hospital formulary and national guidelines.