Pharmacist

Overview

Northern Arizona Healthcare is a 270 bed community hospital with a Level 1 Trauma Center designation. The pharmacy is a 24 hour, fully computerized department with integrated lab/pharmacy/charting systems, automated dispensing, box picker, and computerized physician order entry. Pharmacists rotate through central dispensing as well as decentralized clinical areas including medical-surgical, total joint, behavioral health, pediatrics, woman and infant, surgery, and critical care. Responsibilities include a pharmacokinetic dosing consult service, total parenteral nutrition management, antimicrobial stewardship, renal dosing, anticoagulation monitoring, pharmacotherapy recommendations, drug information, and direct patient education including warfarin and enoxaparin teaching. Pharmacists are also involved in quality improvement and clinical projects. Pharmacists are active members of the patient care team. Emphasis is placed on ensuring patients receive optimal, safe, and cost-effective medication therapy by applying an evidenced-based approach to improve overall patient care, providing pharmacy services to patients from neonatal, infant, child, adolescent, adult and geriatric age groups.

Responsibilities

Patient Care
* Performs clinical services to optimize drug therapy and documents clinical interventions.

* Provides medication therapy management using medication-related protocols including pharmacokinetics, parenteral nutrition, serum creatinine and other therapeutic drug monitoring by utilizing clinical software and assessing relevant information.

* Advises physicians on use of formulary medications and suggests alternative therapeutic options.

* Provides accurate, clinically relevant drug information to physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals.

* Participates in code arrest response by providing information and assuring availability of medications.

* Identifies, prevents, and investigates potential and real adverse drug reactions and medication errors.

* Provides information required for drug related patient counseling.

* Reviews and interprets physician orders properly; screens for incompatibilities, interactions, duplicates, or contraindications.

* Contacts nursing personnel and/or prescriber regarding any questions on drug orders.

* Dispenses and labels medication orders, including oral medications and IV solutions.

* Competent using various pharmacy technology products such as electronic health records, automated dispensing machines, compounders, unit dosing, tube system, and clinical decision support/data mining tools.

Administrative
* Processes patient charges and credits.

* Assists in maintaining basic drug supply from vendors.

* Exercises applicable legal and professional controls on controlled substances.

* Verifies physical inventory for incoming/outgoing items.

* Documents waste from returned/expired/unusable controlled substances properly.

* Supervises and is responsible for oversight of supportive personnel, licensed and non-licensed, and organizes/directs as needed.

* Reports adverse drug reactions, medication errors, and good catches.

Compliance/Safety
* Adheres to regulatory and organizational standards affecting patient care and safety as well as all hospital and departmental policies and procedures. Practices in a safe and cost effective manner.

* Stays current and complies with state and federal regulations/statutes and company policies that impact the employees area of responsibility.

* Ensures all certifications and/or licenses are up-to-date and valid prior to expiration dates.

* Completes all company mandatory modules and required job specific training in the specified time frame.

* Responsible for reporting any safety related incident in a timely fashion through the Midas/RDE tool; attends all safety related training programs; performs work in a safe manner; monitors work environment for possible safety issues and ensures others are also performing work in a safe manner.

Qualifications

Education
Bachelor's Degree in pharmacy from an accredited college of pharmacy- Required

Doctor of Pharmacy degree from an accredited college of pharmacy - Preferred

Certification & Licensures
Arizona State Board of Pharmacy license that is active and in good standing - Required

BLS certification - Required

ACLS certification - Required

PALS certification - Required for positions working in Emergency and Pediatrics departments

Experience
3 months to 1 year- Preferred

Healthcare is a rapidly changing environment and technology is integrated into almost all aspects of patient care. Computers and other electronic devices are utilized across the organization and throughout each department. Colleagues must have an understanding of computers, and competence in using computers and basic software programs.