Lead Pharmacists - General Surgery

The Lead Pharmacist role is vital to ensuring high-quality, safe, and cost-effective pharmaceutical care within General Surgery, Urology, and Ophthalmology. This position upholds compliance with legal, ethical, and professional standards while contributing to strategic planning and policy development. The Lead Pharmacist manages a specialist team, overseeing performance, recruitment, and training to maintain excellence in service delivery.

A key responsibility is optimizing medicines management, ensuring drug therapy is safe, effective, and cost-efficient. This includes expert consultation with medical and nursing staff, adherence to national guidelines, and participation in multidisciplinary team (MDT) ward rounds. The role also involves independent prescribing, supporting seamless patient care from pre-operative stages to discharge.

Additionally, the Lead Pharmacist plays a crucial role in clinical governance by attending strategic meetings, monitoring drug expenditure, and implementing infection control and medicines management policies. Their expertise extends to education and research, leading training programs for pharmacy staff and healthcare professionals while contributing to audits and clinical trials.

Main duties of the job

1. Responsible for delivering the Trust's medicines optimisation agenda to patients admitted under the care of Surgery, with a particular focus on General Surgery, Urology, and Ophthalmology.
2. Managing pharmacy staff working at a ward level within designated surgical wards.
3. Participate in various consultant ward rounds and clinics within specialties identified as key areas.
4. Provide Trust-wide extensive specialist support in an appropriate defined clinical area relevant to the care group. This will include developing collaborative partnerships across organisational boundaries.

About us

We are one of the largest hospital foundation trusts in the country, and currently touch the lives of half a million patients in the west of Berkshire every year by providing high quality acute medical and surgical services for our local communities. The Trust strives to provide high quality, compassionate care for our patients and their families.

Our values:

• Aspirational
• Resourceful

The town of Reading sits on the River Thames and is served by great road and rail links to London, Oxford, and Southampton. With excellent leisure and shopping facilities, and a thriving cultural scene, Reading is a wonderful place to live, work, and play and provides excellent facilities for families, including some of the best state and private schools in the UK.

The CQC rated the care provided by the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust as good.

Job responsibilities

For further details on the role, please refer to the Job Description and Person Specifications attached.

Person Specification

Education and qualifications

• Master Degree in Pharmacy
• IP course
• ACP course

Experience

• Extensive Hospital experience

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

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.

Lead Pharmacist Clinical Services and Workforce