Band 8a - Advanced Clinical Pharmacist for Virtual Ward

The advanced pharmacist will provide a highly specialist clinical and professional pharmaceutical service to virtual ward at Whittington Hospital. They will need to support the wider multidisciplinary team in developing sound governance, building out pharmacy related pathways across the both the ICO and NCL, improve medications optimisation, ensure high quality, safe medication provision and support education across the service in relation to prescribing and administration of medication.
These teams offer clinically stable patients an enhanced supported discharge from the acute hospital focusing on shortening inpatient length of stay by offering nursing care at home as an alternative to continued hospital stay, for up to two weeks.
The post holder will proactively manage a caseload of patients requiring complex case management in order to prevent hospital admissions and facilitate early discharge to improve patient health outcomes. Patients requiring case management in the virtual ward and Rapid Response services will be identified by case-finding in the Ambulatory Emergency Care (AEC) unit, Accident and Emergency department, Whittington Hospital, UCLH and LAS, Care Homes, Community Nurses and via GP referral and NHS 111 referrals., Facilitate the early discharge ('step-down') of patients from Whittington Health and UCLH inpatient wards and complete their recovery in the home environment by working collaboratively with the AEC Consultant.
Also contribute to admission avoidance for 'step-up' patients via the complex frailty virtual ward pathway and rapid response services.
Provide and develop a specialist clinical pharmacy service to improve the quality of patient care and to promote evidence-based, cost-effective prescribing and use of medicines. Identify risks related to medicines and manage these to ensure patient safety and improve patient experience.
To help with overall governance of medication within the Virtual Wards
Lead on projects and audits to monitor the delivery of the pharmacy service as the virtual ward evolves.
To ensure safe and secure handling of medications as dictated by the Whittington and RPS standards
To support the provision of clinical pharmacy services to patients requiring pharmaceutical support once discharged from the hospital to Virtual Wards
To provide day to day management of medication provision to Virtual Wards
To support medicines management and medication optimisation activities within the Virtual Wards and providing support to the wider multidisciplinary team (MDT) in this area, when needed
To help with integration of pharmacy services across adult community services and the acute site

Working for our organisation
Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work., Be aware of and utilise appropriate resources within the Virtual Wards team and in the provision of total patient care. To help manage the team on a day to day basis, supporting junior staff with decision making and skills development
Act as a link pharmacist to AEC consultants, GPs, Community Nurses, LAS, Social Services and other relevant professional areas as necessary.
Undertake a comprehensive baseline assessment for each identified patient in conjunction with the AEC consultant, patient, relatives, carers and patient care team.
Use the assessment to agree and implement a patient held personalised plan of care to be agreed with the patient, relatives and carers and the patient care team
Ensure that there are effective communications with other agencies (including Out of Hours Services) about care plans and maximise the input of these agencies to support patients at home
Promote self-management and health gain through patient education and health promotion activity
Prescribe medication as appropriate and help with auditing and monitoring of the overall service prescribing. Further education and guidance for wider MDT around prescribing practice
Perform and document episodic examinations to support proactive monitoring of chronic diseases and identification of early symptoms of exacerbation and liaise with professionals including the Lead Matron as necessary.
Work collaboratively with the AEC consultant or GP (as agreed) and liaise following any significant event, to review and amend treatment.
Ensure that as far as possible the patient care is provided in the community and to work with the AEC consultant, ward consultants and/ or General Practitioner and patient care team to facilitate this and reduce hospital admission.
SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN AND ADULTS
To comply with the Trust's Safeguarding Children and Adults policies, procedures and protocols. All individual members of staff (paid or unpaid) have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults This will require you to:
+ Ensure you are familiar with and comply with the London Child Protection Procedures and protocols for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young people.
+ Ensure you are familiar and comply with the London Multi Agency Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Pan London Procedures.
+ Ensure you are familiar and comply with local protocols and systems for information sharing.
+ Know the appropriate contact numbers and required reporting lines.
+ Participate in required training and supervision.
+ Comply with required professional boundaries and codes of conduct
Whittington Health is committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
Your application form -
1. Provide only business email address for your referees - we are unable to request references from yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail accounts.
2. Make sure you to include all evidence of where you meet the essential requirement on the jobs description as this forms the base of our shortlisting criteria.
Our processes -
1. Closing dates are given as a guide; we are within our right to close adverts early so please ensure you submit your application as soon as possible to avoid delay.
2. If you do not hear from us up to 3 weeks after the closing date of the job unfortunately this means you have not been successfully shortlisted for interview. If your require feedback on your application please contact the appointing manager detailed in the body of the advert.
3. Please check your emails regularly as all correspondence from us will be via trac.systems - occasionally these emails will go into your Junk folder.
4. Employment at Whittington Health is offered subject to successful completion of a 6 month probationary period for all staff with the exception of GMC Registered Doctors.
Other important information -
+ Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI points based system.
+ Applications are welcome from people wishing to job share or work flexible patterns. We are committed to equal opportunities.
+ In submitting an application form, you authorise Whittington Health NHS Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process should you be appointed to the post.
If you are offered a role with one of the NLPSS partner trusts, as part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a "selfie" using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk
Please note that during the recruitment process your Identity Documentation (i.e. passport, driving licence, visa, etc.) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, Infrared and Machine Readable Zone security features of the documents provided
The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.
We would welcome applications from individuals who are from underrepresented groups in the organisation