The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s Clinical Fellow Scheme provides early-career pharmacists the opportunity to spend one year working with senior pharmacy leaders in national healthcare organisations.
NHS England is now inviting for the 2017 Clinical Fellowship Scheme for practising pharmacists. The placements will allow eight clinical fellows to work in an apprenticeship style model for 12 months with the most senior leaders across the NHS and healthcare-related organisations.
NHS said that all successful applicants will be appointed to host organisations and take up fellowship roles for 12 months, starting in September 2017.
Chief Pharmaceutical Officer Keith Ridge announced the coveted placements at his recent conference, Quality for patients: Pharmacy practice now and in the future last month. The scheme will remain open between April and May for applicants interested in applying, said the NHS.
Within these host organisations the fellows will lead on key projects which contribute to national healthcare priorities around patient safety, medicines optimisation, transfer of care, digitalisation and pharmacy workforce training. Organisations set to take part include NHS England, Health Education England, NICE, NHS Digital, Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education and the Care Quality Commission – others that may take on fellows include BUPA, NHS Improvement and Public Health England.
CPO Ridge, said: “The focus on medicines and the pharmacy profession is increasing all the time, and in order to really make a difference to our patients and help them to get the best possible outcomes from their medicines, we need high quality leadership. The opportunities for pharmacists to step up and grasp those opportunities have never been greater and this is why I have established the Chief Pharmaceutical Officers Clinical Fellowship Scheme to identify and develop the future leaders of our profession.”
The total pharmacy workforce is some 150,000 with approximately 75,000 Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians employed working in hospitals, community pharmacy and primary care, and across England there are nearly 12,000 community pharmacies. Being the third largest workforce group in the NHS, the pharmacy workforce has a significant influence on how medicines are used.