Clinical Pharmacist Relief - Emergency Department

Department Overview

The pharmacist will experience competing demands from nurses, physicians, pharmacy staff, and other

healthcare professionals as they attempt to influence clinical decision-making, clinical policies, and

practices and workflow. The pharmacist must deal with intense situations on a daily basis. In addition,

within the healthcare setting, there can be significant lack of control over the work pace, with frequent

interruptions (work is often dictated by external factors) that may lead to mental fatigue or stress.

 

The purpose of this position is to provide the services of a licensed pharmacist, which includes the

responsibility for the safe and proper distribution and use of medications in inpatients and outpatients who

range in age from neonates, infants less than one year of age, children and adolescents ages 10–18, adults ages 19–65, and the elderly over age 65.

 

The pharmacist functions at a high level of clinical decision-making, proactively influencing drug therapy by

making recommendations at the point of prescribing or, in some cases, making independent therapy decisions

in collaboration with other healthcare team members. Additional services provided include facilitation of

medication reconciliation, discharge counseling, and medication delivery through coordination of care from

admission to discharge. The pharmacist must possess strong communication skills for patient education and

work collaboratively with inpatient and outpatient interdisciplinary teams including, but not limited to,

providers, nurses, case workers, pharmacists, and technicians, as well as contributing to the teaching and

precepting of students, interns, and/or residents.

 

This position will report to Inpatient Central Operations leadership and is designed to support both centralized

operational functions and decentralized clinical services, with opportunities to cross-train and provide

coverage across other inpatient service lines based on operational needs.

 

This is a flexible model where coordination during transitions of care and medication use for patients is

integrated with traditionally centralized functions, such as order entry/verifications, while also supporting

decentralized clinical service needs. This model will continue to evolve as part of an integrated decentralized

patient care practice.

Function/Duties of Position

• Identifies, resolves and documents complex therapeutic problems, demonstrating advanced knowledge and application of this knowledge to a specific patient population.

• Interprets and evaluates physician's orders and prescriptions for accuracy, completeness and appropriateness. Documents activities of clinical decision or medication distribution issues that are not in line with the standard of practice, require follow-up, or continued monitoring/evaluation. Verify the accuracy and appropriateness of medications prepared and dispensed from the central pharmacy.

• Assists in the reconciliation of medications, education of patients regarding their home medication regimens, and coordination of the discharge medication plan with the interdisciplinary team. Documents activities in the patient medical record.

• Monitors therapeutic response and adverse effects of medications to guide drug therapy. Consults with provider when questions or problems are identified and documents activies in the patient medical record. Appropriately reports all adverse drug reactions, drug defects, and medication errors.

• Responds accurately to requests for drug information from physicians, nurses, patients and patient's families; independently reviews and interprets the literature and applies this information to specific patient care situations.

• Other Duties as Assigned

Required Qualifications

• A current Pharmacist’s license issued by the Oregon State Board of Pharmacy.

   

• OHSU may require training or experience in a specialized area at time of recruitment.

Job Related Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (Competencies):

• Inpatient hospital pharmacy practice: Ability to meet the pharmaceutical care needs of the following patient care types: Acute care, psychiatric, rehabilitation, skilled nursing, long-term care, obstetric, oncology, chemically dependent, HIV, home care, hospice. 
• Demonstrates the ability to: Enforce pharmaceutical care principles safely and accurately
• Make age-related modification of drug therapy
• Make disease-related modification of drug therapy
• Evaluate medical literature
• Work independently without minimal direct supervision
• Handle multiple tasks and frequen