Antimicrobial Stewardship Pharmacist

SUMMARY:

Facilitate the design, implementation, and monitoring of strategies to ensure safe, clinically effective, and cost effective medication use; strategies may include guidelines, policies, protocols, order sets, or care pathways; monitors utilization of medications in order to identify when medication use strategies needs to be developed to impact practice.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

Participates in medication utilization opportunities for stewardship of high cost or high use medications to limit waste, generate revenue, or reduce overall cost of care and communicates enforcement with the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee.

Coordinate trending and analysis of stewardship data; report generation and periodic assessment of software to improve analytics capabilities.

Collaborates with healthcare providers to evaluate and implement best practices related to medication prescribing as well as developing metrics to measure safe and effective medication management in the hospital setting.

Review and revise medication order sets or clinical pathways as needed.

Recommends and implements preventive and corrective action needed to meet Joint Commission, CMS, Arizona State Board of Pharmacy, and other regulatory standards as appropriate.

Develops and maintains established departmental policies and procedures regarding process improvement, safety, cost optimization, waste reduction, and other pharmacy standards as applicable.

Interprets and clarifies written orders for all types of medications.

Prepares compounds, labels, and packages medications and pharmaceuticals, in accordance with established professional protocols and standards.

Secures storage of narcotics and other controlled substances on a regular basis.

Ensures all charges for dispensed medication orders are captured in hospital’s billing system.

Provides medications and drug information relative to circumstances and patient conditions in emergency codes in the hospital.

Communicates drug-related side effects, dosages, potential complications to health care professionals.

Advises patients and/or their representatives on use of various medications, including dosage, side effects and composition.

Remains informed about current developments concerning new drugs or test results regarding drug usage; researches drug information requests and responds promptly.

Promotes effective use of formulary system through drug product selection and therapeutic alternative produce suggestion for non-formulary orders.

Monitors drug therapy as assigned by physicians; suggest alternative drug therapy when appropriate.

Consults with and advises medical staff personnel regarding utilization of drugs and pharmaceuticals.

Oversees work of Pharmacy Technicians/Pharmacy Interns participating in the preparation, documentation and dispensing of medications and pharmaceuticals.

Adheres to TMCH organizational and department-specific safety, confidentiality, values policies and standards.

Collect and analyze quality metrics in specialty area.

Provides education to pharmacy interns, students and PGY1 residents.

Participation in rounds and care coordination conferences as appropriate.

Participation in quality improvement committees as assigned.

Performs related duties as assigned.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

EDUCATION: Doctor of Pharmacy degree from an AACP-accredited College of Pharmacy or Bachelor’s Degree from an AACP-accredited College of Pharmacy.   

EXPERIENCE:  Five (5) years of clinical pharmacist experience or completion of a PGY1 residency with 2 years of additional clinical experience. Pharmacy residency preceptor experience required.

LICENSURE OR CERTIFICATION : Current Arizona Pharmacist license upon hire. Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) certifications. Board certified through the Board of Pharmacy Specialties required. 

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES: 

• Knowledge of drugs, possible side effects or interactions with other drugs, and how to compound medication in accordance with professional standards and practices.
• Skill in following physicians’ orders and prescribed medications and relaying any procedures and concerns to the patient.
• Skill in responding to patients’ questions or concerns.
• Ability to read, analyze, and interpret general business periodicals, professional journals, technical procedures, or governmental regulations.
• Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals.
• Ability to effectively present information and respond to inquiries or complaints from employees, patients and/or their representatives, and the general public.
• Ability to apply advanced mathematical concepts such as exponents or logarithms.
• Ability to apply mathematical operations to such tasks as frequency distribution, single or multiple regressions, determination of test reliability and validity, correlation techniques, sampling theory and factor analysis.
• Ability to apply principles of logical or scientific thinking to a wide range of intellectual and practical problems.
• Ability to deal with nonverbal symbolism (formulas, scientific equations, graphs, etc.).
• Ability to deal with a variety of abstract and concrete variables.