Virtual Ward Pharmacist

The role of the Virtual Ward Pharmacist sits within the Calderdale Urgent Community Response Service. This service provides urgent assessment, care and intervention to support people to remain at home, avoid hospital admissions and to step down from hospital to community sooner. The Urgent Community Response Service works as a multi-disciplinary team with Allied Health Professionals, Nurses, Rehabilitation Assistants and Independent Living Officers - providing anything from a 0-2hr urgent assessment at home, to supporting individuals with domiciliary care for up to a week. The service accepts anyone over the age of 18 therefore a very varied caseload of people to support, all with different needs.

The post holder is responsible for providing a specialist clinical pharmacy service to patients in their own homes or care homes in the Calderdale and Huddersfield area this may be as part of the Virtual ward (VW)/ Urgent Community response Team (UCR) or the wider Community Division. The post holder will be an integral part of the virtual ward team and work seamlessly between primary and secondary care and link with a range of healthcare professionals to optimise concordance and compliance with prescribed medication.

For the purpose of this post all patients who are accepted to the Community caseload and are registered with a GP in Calderdale or Huddersfield may be reviewed, they may also be referred directly from CHFT staff or Gateway to Care when concerns about medication that might increase chances of admission or readmission are identified. Patients may be on high risk medication or complex regimes.

We employ more than 6,500 staff who deliver compassionate care from our two main hospitals, Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary as well as in community sites, health centres and in patients’ homes. We also are incredibly proud to have almost 150 volunteers here at CHFT.

We provide a range of services including urgent and emergency care; medical; surgical; maternity; gynaecology; critical care; children’s and young people’s services; end of life care and outpatient and diagnostic imaging services.

We provide community health services, including sexual health services in Calderdale from Calderdale Royal and local health centres. These include Todmorden Health Centre and Broad Street Plaza.

We continue to modernise and invest in our health services to build on our strong reputation. Foundation trusts are public leaders in improving quality in health services. They are part of the NHS – yet decisions about what they do and how they do it are driven by independent boards. Boards listen to their Council of Governors and respond to the needs of their members – patients, staff and the local community.

Foundation trusts provide what the health service wants, yet are also free to invest quickly in the changes to the local community needs, in striving to be the best, and in putting their patients first.

For further details / informal visits contact: Name: Rebecca Pollard Job title: Lead Virtual Ward Pharmacist Email address: rebecca.pollard@cht.nhs.uk Telephone number: 07780096734