Principal Clinical Pharmacist Mental Health - Division LeadNHS
Job summary
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced and enthusiastic mental health pharmacist to join Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) as a Principal Clinical Pharmacist - Division Lead for our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), Community Perinatal Mental Health Service and Mother & Baby Unit.
This is a senior leadership role within the Pharmacy and Medicines Optimisation Team, providing strategic, clinical and operational leadership across a diverse portfolio of specialist services. The post holder will lead the development and delivery of high-quality, evidence-based and patient-centred pharmacy services, ensuring the safe and effective use of medicines across both inpatient and community settings.
The successful candidate will work closely with senior clinicians, managers and multidisciplinary teams to influence prescribing practice, improve patient outcomes and drive medicines optimisation initiatives across the service.
This is an excellent opportunity for a pharmacist looking to progress their career within specialist mental health services whilst contributing to innovative service development and quality improvement programmes.
Main duties of the job
As a Divisional Lead Pharmacist, you will:
- Provide highly specialist clinical pharmacy expertise in mental health, learning disabilities and forensic services
- Lead and develop pharmacy services across assigned divisions, ensuring high-quality, evidence-based and cost-effective medicines use
- Influence prescribing practice and contribute to Trust-wide medicines optimisation strategy and governance
- Use Independent Prescribing skills (where qualified) within agreed scopes and Trust policy
- Support medicines safety through incident review, learning, audit and quality improvement initiatives
- Line manage and develop Band 6/7 pharmacists and other pharmacy staff, fostering a strong learning culture
- Deliver and oversee education and training for pharmacists, technicians and wider healthcare professionals
- Contribute to policy development, formulary management and Trust committees (e.g. Drugs & Therapeutics)
- Work collaboratively across services and systems to support safe and seamless transfer of care
Job description
- 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.
For a more detailed description, please see attached job description and person specification. For more information contact Darshni Haria (current post holder), [email protected] or Georgia Michael, [email protected]
About us
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust is one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of 'Outstanding' from the Care Quality Commission
Our family of over 4,000 members of staff provide health and social care for people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. Everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.
In return, we can offer you:
- leadership and management training opportunities
- 5% on top of basic salary high cost allowance supplement (subject to a minimum and a maximum payment pro rata)
- 27 days holiday rising to 33 days (depending on NHS Trust service) plus bank holidays (pro rata where applicable)
- One of the UK's best pension schemes
- Free Pilates lessons
- Comprehensive health and wellbeing services
- Special leave for family and personal reasons
- NHS Car Lease Scheme
- Employee Assistance Programme
Our staff survey results tell a story of highly engaged, motivated, passionate people working at HPFT. The survey has shown that staff overwhelmingly believe that their role makes a difference to service users, to the extent that HPFT had the best score nationally for this question.