Advanced Clinical Pharmacist for Acute Virtual Ward

Advanced Clinical Pharmacist for Acute Virtual Ward

VirtualWard - Advanced Clinical Pharmacist

There is 1WTE position (37.5 hours per week) available. Applications for full and part-time working will be considered. No weekend, bank holiday or on-call working. Hybrid working available.

Are you passionate about making a difference in the lives of people in our communities across Plymouth, the South Hams, and West Devon? Do you thrive in a dynamic and innovative healthcare environment? We have some very exciting opportunities to join our integrated acute Virtual Ward team. This project forms part of a wider plan to improve urgent and emergency healthcare delivery as well as step up and step down care from the acute hospital.

We are committed to revolutionising healthcare delivery for patients. Our aim is to provide high-quality, patient-centred care in the comfort of their own homes, reducing length of hospital stay and admissions and enhancing overall well-being through enhanced care coordination.

The Role

As the Advanced Clinical Pharmacist, you will play a critical role in our multidisciplinary team, covering the expanded virtual ward that we have planned for our locality. The post holder will work closely with consultants, GPs, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to ensure seamless, integrated care on the virtual ward, by providing specialist medicines assessments and interventions for those admitted to the acute Virtual Ward.

This role may not be eligible for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route.

Main duties of the job

Key Responsibilities

1. Leadership within the Virtual ward regarding medicines and medicines governance.
2. Structured medication reviews including complex polypharmacy and deprescribing.
3. Prescribing and accurate record keeping regarding medications.
4. Answering medication queries raised by the multidisciplinary team and providing clinical support to the Virtual Ward Technician.

About us

Livewell Southwest is an independent, award-winning social enterprise delivering integrated health and social care services across Plymouth, South Hams, and West Devon, with specialist services in parts of Devon and Cornwall. Our teams work in community hospitals, GP practices, sports centres, and health hubs.

As an organisation with a strong social conscience, we are guided by our values: kindness, respect, inclusivity, ambition, responsibility, and collaboration. We focus on transforming services to ensure sustainability while empowering staff and those we serve.

We involve the people we care for, along with their families and carers, in shaping the care they receive, striving to deliver the right care at the right time and place. Centering our work on individual needs helps people lead healthy, independent lives.

Job responsibilities

Clinical and Professional

1. To be responsible for and lead the provision of a high-quality, specialised clinical pharmacy service to ensure the safe, clinically effective and cost-efficient use of medicines.
2. To be responsible for the delivery of the clinical pharmacy services to nominated areas, including attendance at consultant ward rounds, providing expert pharmaceutical advice and setting standards for junior pharmacists to emulate.
3. To be responsible for the provision of professional pharmaceutical advice to healthcare colleagues, patients, and carers as necessary.
4. To develop and monitor pharmacy initiatives such as medicines reconciliation on admission and provision of discharge summaries to GPs, which promote seamless transfer of patients from secondary care to primary care and vice versa.
5. To lead on and develop policy or service changes within Virtual Wards which improve ward or community services and be responsible for their implementation.

Person Specification

Personal Attributes

• Well-motivated, conscientious and reliable.
• Readily approachable, sensitive and supportive.
• Strong professional values.

Experience

• Experience as a practising pharmacist, including experience of working as a member of a Multidisciplinary Team.
• Experience of networking with other healthcare professionals across the full range of disciplines at all levels.
• Experience of review and development of pharmacy or medication related policies, procedures and PGDs.
• Experience of audit work.
• Experience of delivering education to healthcare staff and patients or carers via workshops, informal discussion or formal lectures.
• Experience of working in different sectors of Pharmacy across the system.
• Experience of preparing documents for clinical governance groups and presenting these to a committee.
• Experience of leading on audit and producing reports.
• Experience of mentoring, supervision and line management.
• Experience of influencing, negotiating and implementing change in practice.

Qualifications

• Masters Degree or equivalent in Pharmacy.
• Registered Practising Member of the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• Specialist knowledge acquired by postgraduate diploma or equivalent evidence of specialist knowledge, competence and achievements in practice in pharmacy.
• Evidence of Continuing Professional Development and revalidation.
• Postgraduate qualification in clinical pharmacy.
• Independent prescriber or willingness to work towards.

Please refer to attachment for full job description.