Pharmacy Recruitment

City Hospitals Sunderland Pharmacy department employs over 150 wte staff, including over 80 Pharmacists.

The main pharmacy at Sunderland Royal Hospital houses an in-patient dispensary, the pharmacy store, medicine information office, sterile and non-sterile manufacturing facilities, and offices for our clinical pharmacists.It is the main focus for pharmaceutical services within the Trust and it currently operates a full Integrated Medicines Management service from 8 am until 8 pm Mondays to Fridays and 9am to 5pm Saturday and Sunday with dispensary support.. Trust directorates include general medicine, medical specialties, elderly care, emergency care, trauma & orthopaedics, critical care, surgery and urology, paediatrics, head and neck, and women’s services. Outpatient facilities are run from a separate dispensary that is operated by CHoICE a wholly owned subsidiary of CHS. They also provide a dispensary based service at the specialst Ophthalmology Hospital.

The service has seen significant change over the past 5 years and now:

Pharmacy is a clinical service performed by pharmacists at the patient level supported by internal operational functions; the target achieved is over 90% of Pharmacist time being on clinical activities
The profile and status of the pharmaceutical service within the Trust is seen as high performing with a significant number of clinical indicators above national norms (see circles of achievement).
The 7 day extended hours clinical and technical integrated medicines management service continues to meet the objectives of clinical directorates whilst retaining and developing its own professional aspirations thus remaining attractive to existing and potential staff.All on-call is limited to the senior team only.
We have a 7 day front of house team supported by 10 advanced pharmacy practitioners
The service operates on the principle of “consult” and “delegate” rather than “triage” and “refer” to ensure patients are seen within the admission stage by the most clinically adept practitioner from advanced to specialist pharmacist supported by a team of 31 wte IMM technicians.

We aim to continue this progress of re-orientating the pharmacy service from what was once a traditional reactive dispensary focused supply service, into a modern leading edge service providing complete medication management at the individual patient level as evidenced by the fact that 80% of pharmacist and pharmacy technician activity is already outwith infrastructure delivery.The developments completed include:

Full Integrated medication management including Pre-Assessment Clinics & Consultant Ward Rounds on 30 wards with over 60% medicines reconciliation within 14 hours.
Complete Electronic Prescribing and Administration to all inpatients including the majority of outpatient and oncology prescribing
Outpatient Anticoagulant Management as well as many pharmacist led clinics in areas Modern Dispensing practices including 28 day dispensing, re-utilisation of POD’s, dispensing for discharge and two fully automated dispensaries
Development of new clinical services by Pharmacists & Technicians including prescribing.
>95% of inpatient discharges are completed by pharmacists
Performance indicators set by the Board that are clinically not logistically focused

Integrated Medicines Management

Our clinical service is centred around the Integrated Medicines Management (IMM) service which is a term used to describe the clinical pharmacy service that improves the safety and quality of care at key points of the patient’s stay.

The following video describes how this is put into action to benefit patients.

The aims of the IMM service are

to ensure the patient receives the right drug at the right dose at the right time
to prepare medication ready for discharge to reduce the amount of time patients have to wait for their medication
to improve patient’s knowledge of their medication and improve communication with GPs and community pharmacy about any changes that have occurred during an inpatient stay.
to promote the safe and cost effective use of medicines.

Pharmacists

Newly qualified pharmacists (Band 6) gain broad experience in all aspects of pharmacy through a structured training and rotation programme.The emphasis is on service delivery at the individual patient level with over 90% of pharmacist time spent on clinical commitment throughout their training irrespective of their placement.You will during this time complete a clinical diploma that incudes clinical skills and independent prescribing.

Specialist clinical pharmacists (Band 7) have defined responsibilities in their speciality and they are supported at ward level by technicians and newly qualified pharmacists.Both pharmacists and technicians have excellent relationships with the ward nursing and medical staff.As well as delivering patient focused pharmaceutical care including medication histories, consultant ward rounds and discharge planning as part of the multidisciplinary team, they also are expected to participate in practice research and audit.

Senior and Specialist clinical pharmacists, who all have postgraduate qualifications, have a great deal of experience in their speciality. They provide managerial and or clinical leadership and support, which is specifically aimed at developing the professional skills of the clinical pharmacists.They also meet the management information needs of their speciality by leading on audit and drug utilisation research as well as providing and interpreting drug cost information.

Clinical services

The pharmacist run anticoagulant clinic has won pharmaceutical awards for innovative practice and has expanded both into the community and in the hospital.

Independent prescribers are currently managing patient is outpatient clinics in

Diabetes
Stroke
Cardiology
Heart failure
Thyroid
Pain management
Palliative Care
Haematology
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
COPD
Renal Disease
Surgical pre-assessment (Bariatrics)
Endocrinology
Oncology
Opthalmology
VTE
Falls
Dementia
Renal
Rheumatology

Independent prescribers also support inpatient care for medical and surgical emergency admission units and within A&E. Specialist pharmacists also support the care of inpatients in the following areas - palliative care, frailty, dementia and delirium and heart failure.

These chronic disease management clinics and inpatient practitioners provide the template for future service development as described above.

Medicines information & formulary management

The medicines information service supports the safe, effective and efficient use of medicines throughout the trust by the provision of evidence-based information and advice on the therapeutic use of medicines. It is well funded and resourced and is one of the busiest local MI departments in the north-east. The formulary pharmacist produces and monitors compliance to well established prescribing guidelines and supports the clinical pharmacists as necessary with drug utilisation research advice.

Education & training

Thedepartment has a strong commitment to training, illustrated by the success of our staff in gaining further qualifications. The service is actively involved in the delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and research with local universities including the School of Pharmacy at Sunderland, North Tyneside College and other Education Providers. All pharmacists are expected to hold and are funded for postgraduate qualifications including clinical skills and prescribing. Sunderland is a major site for the delivery of clinical training for the School of Pharmacy. Research and audit within the department is well supported by the Research and Audit Group and we have research links with the local School of Pharmacy.

Information services

The introduction of trust wide electronic prescribing and medicines administration (EPMA) over the last ten years has radically altered the delivery of medicines optimisation within the Trust for both Pharmacists and Technicians. This has helped us achieve a medicines reconciliation rate of 84% within 24 hours, and 87% of all newly prescribed items clinically checked within 48 hours of prescribing. CHS is a global digital exemplar site and initially the only trust within the North-East to be named to pioneer use of digital technology to drive patient improvements.