Epsom and St Helier seeks lead pharmacist to steer medicines optimisation across planned and critical care
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust is recruiting a Lead Pharmacist for Planned and Critical Care, a post built around strategic, operational, and professional leadership in medicines optimisation. The role sits at the intersection of frontline clinical care and service design, with responsibility for ensuring pharmacy support is delivered effectively across surgical, critical care, trauma, theatre, musculoskeletal, and parenteral nutrition pathways.
This is not a narrow dispensing post. It is a senior clinical position that places pharmacy leadership directly into the most resource-intensive parts of hospital medicine, where antimicrobial choices, perioperative prescribing, nutrition support, and high-acuity medication decisions can shape outcomes within hours rather than weeks.
The advertised remit combines patient-facing practice with team management, service planning, and evidence-based stewardship. In practical terms, that means the pharmacist will be expected to influence how medicines are selected, used, monitored, and reviewed across Planned and Critical Care, while also leading colleagues who deliver day-to-day pharmacy services in those areas.
Medicines decisions in high-acuity care carry immediate consequences
In planned surgery and critical care, the margin for medication error is small. Sedatives, anticoagulants, antibiotics, analgesics, vasoactive agents, and parenteral nutrition all demand careful review because each can affect hemodynamics, infection risk, recovery time, and length of stay. A senior pharmacist in this setting helps align prescribing with current evidence, local protocols, and cost-effective practice without losing sight of bedside urgency.
The post also requires an advanced clinical service to patients, which may include direct work in surgery, critical care, trauma, theatre, musculoskeletal services, and parenteral nutrition. Those clinical environments require rapid decision-making and close collaboration with surgeons, intensivists, nurses, dietitians, and operational teams. In that context, medicines optimisation is not an abstract quality goal. It is the mechanism by which therapy becomes safer, more precise, and more sustainable.
The trust frames the role as suitable for a pharmacist seeking to develop or extend clinical leadership and systems thinking. The language points to a senior practitioner who can move between individual patient decisions and wider service delivery, translating drug knowledge into operational standards that withstand the pressure of a busy hospital division.
Seven-day pharmacy cover adds an operational burden to the clinical brief
The position includes participation in seven-day working, late duty rotas, and the Pharmacy Senior On Call team. Those responsibilities signal that the service operates beyond a conventional weekday model and that clinical pharmacy input is expected when urgent decisions arise outside standard hours.
For planned and critical care services, weekend and out-of-hours pharmacy cover can be the difference between a delayed medication review and timely treatment adjustment. A specialist lead in this setting must therefore combine clinical authority with operational resilience, ensuring staffing, escalation, and service continuity remain intact when demand spikes or complex cases cross service boundaries.
Leadership extends beyond the ward to workforce and service planning
Alongside direct clinical input, the role involves leading and managing pharmacy staff working in the Planned and Critical Care Division. The trust specifies that the post holder will help ensure service delivery to agreed standards and business planning requirements, placing workforce coordination squarely inside the job description.
In hospital pharmacy, this kind of leadership shapes more than schedules. It influences how clinical priorities are triaged, how medicines safety issues are escalated, and how limited specialist time is distributed across competing pressures. A lead pharmacist in this environment is expected to support performance, embed standards, and maintain the credibility of pharmacy as a core clinical service rather than an ancillary function.
The advert also emphasizes support for clinical, leadership, managerial, research, and strategic development. That combination suggests a post designed not only to fill a staffing need, but to cultivate a senior practitioner who can contribute to wider service redesign and measurable improvement over time.
A trust serving a wide and diverse population
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust provides care to approximately 490,000 people across southwest London and northeast Surrey, with specialist services extending further into parts of Sussex and Hampshire. The trust’s patient base spans urban and rural communities and includes areas of marked socioeconomic contrast.
That population mix matters for medicines use. Variability in comorbidity burden, access to care, and deprivation can all affect prescribing complexity, adherence, and perioperative risk. A strong pharmacy leadership structure helps standardize safe practice across a broad catchment while still allowing services to respond to local clinical need.
The trust employs about 5,000 staff and is supported by more than 500 volunteers. In that setting, pharmacy leadership functions as part of a larger operational ecosystem, with the lead pharmacist expected to work closely with colleagues across the hospital and with external NHS partners in Surrey, Sutton, and Merton.
Strategic pharmacy leadership is becoming central to hospital medicine
Modern hospital pharmacy now sits much closer to the center of acute care than it did a decade ago. High-acuity medicine depends on specialist review, antimicrobial stewardship, nutrition oversight, and medication reconciliation performed by clinicians who understand both pharmacology and service flow. A post such as this reflects that shift.
The trust is asking for a pharmacist who can combine professional judgment with organizational discipline, clinical credibility with system-level thinking, and patient-facing work with team leadership. Those demands are especially pronounced in planned and critical care, where drug therapy is tightly tied to procedural timing, physiologic instability, and rapid post-intervention recovery.
The closing date for the post is 25 November 2026, with the advert itself closing on Monday 9 November 2026. The role is permanent and part-time, and the salary range is listed at £72,719 to £83,505 pro-rata per annum inclusive of HCAS for Outer London. The notice also directs applicants to demonstrate how they meet the essential criteria in the attached person specification, indicates the seniority and specificity of the appointment.
For hospital pharmacists with experience in acute care, this is a leadership post that ties medication stewardship to some of the most complex clinical pathways in the trust. The workload will be shaped by theatre schedules, critical care demand, and multidisciplinary decision-making, leaving little room for passive oversight and little tolerance for fragmented medicines management.