Clinical Pharmacist

About the role

The Clinical Pharmacist Float is a licensed professional skilled in pharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacotherapeutics. They provide comprehensive pharmaceutical care in Inpatient, Acute Care, CLC, and Outpatient settings, assessing real and potential drug issues and taking action to ensure optimal therapy.

Responsibilities

• Provides appropriate selection of drug therapy based upon the pharmaceutical principles of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics; monitoring for efficacy, side effects and clinical outcome; and advises prescribers as appropriate.
• Provides patient-specific therapeutic drug monitoring and communicates relevant findings and/or recommendations to other health care providers in charge of the patient both orally and in writing.
• Maintains continuous evaluation of prescribed medications to assure optimal drug therapy.
• Provides medication counseling to patients.
• Completes health and medication histories including patient interviews.
• Serves as a drug information resource by providing up-to-date drug information to prescribers, other health care professionals, patients and caregivers.
• Performs medication reconciliation at all transitions of care, including updating the medication profile to reflect an accurate, active list of VA and non-VA medications.
• Affords drug safety and efficacy assessment, including evaluation of physical symptoms.
• Reports adverse drug events (ADE), near misses, and medication errors in alignment with VA ADERS reporting program.
• Participates in the medical center medication utilization evaluation (MUE) program.
• Recommends formulary alternatives and completes Prior Authorization Drug Review (PADR) consults as assigned.
• Documents recommendations and interventions.
• Assists in medical emergencies including code teams (if ACLS certified) and emergency preparedness activities.
• Provides pharmacokinetic consultation in accordance with local policy.
• Implements P&T Committee policies including therapeutic interchanges and automatic substitutions to include appropriate patient and provider education.
• Manages recalls and medication shortage situations by substituting alternate dosage strengths and instructions of the same medication to equal the prescribed dose and schedule.
• Enters supply orders appropriate for patient care per facility policy.
• Manages various actions, as appropriate, for medication orders to include flagging prescriptions, managing view alerts, using the "hold medication" function, and generating unsigned discontinued orders using Service Reject.
• Extends refills until next scheduled appointment under the provider's name per facility policy.
• Serves as a role model and preceptor to pharmacy students, interns and residents.
• Assumes an active role in staff development of peers and provides educational in-services to nursing, medical staff or to other ancillary services.
• Maintains professional competency by keeping abreast of current medical and pharmaceutical literature, new drugs and therapies, and applies this knowledge in daily duties.
• Able to perform both non-sterile and sterile compounding of oral, topical, and injectable medications using proper pharmaceutical technique when assigned.
• Participates in Performance Improvement (PI) Measurements / activities (Mock Surveys, Tracers)
• Participates in Trail Audits for controlled substances, reports discrepancies to appropriate managers, and follows up on the resolution of discrepancies.

Requirements

Open to current or past Health Professional Pharmacy Trainees of the Department of Veterans Affairs- Veterans Health Administration (VHA) only.

Note: The 2-page Resume requirement does not apply to this position. For more information, refer to Required Documents below.

Qualifications

Applicants pending the completion of educational or certification/licensure requirements may be referred and tentatively selected but may not be hired until all requirements are met.

Basic Requirements:

• United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy.
• Educational: (1) Graduate of an Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) accredited College or School of Pharmacy with a baccalaureate degree in pharmacy (BS Pharmacy) and/or a Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree. Verification of approved degree programs may be obtained from the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, 20 North Clark Street, Suite 2500, Chicago, Illinois 60602-5109; phone: (312) 664-3575, or through their Web site at: http://www.acpe-accredit.org/. (NOTE: Prior to 2005 ACPE accredited both baccalaureate and Doctor of Pharmacy terminal degree program. Today the sole degree is Doctor of Pharmacy.) (2) Graduates of foreign pharmacy degree programs meet the educational requirement if the graduate is able to provide proof of achieving the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Examination Commission (FPGEC) Certification, which includes passing the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency Examination (FPGEE) and the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet- Based Test (TOEFL iBT).
• Licensure: Full, current and unrestricted license to practice pharmacy in a State, Territory, Commonwealth of the United States (i.e., Puerto Rico), or the District of Columbia. The pharmacist must maintain current registration if this is a requirement for maintaining full, current, and unrestricted licensure. A pharmacist who has, or has ever had, any license(s) revoked, suspended, denied, restricted, limited, or issued/placed in a probationary status may be appointed only in accordance with the provisions in VA Handbook 5005, Part II, Chapter 3, section B, paragraph 16.
• English Language Proficiency: Pharmacists must be proficient in spoken and written English as required by 38 U.S.C. 7402(d), and 7407(d).