Pharmacy Technician

Job Title: Pharmacy Technician

Salary: £35, 793 - £43,573 (based on experience)

Hours: 37.5 hours per week

Responsible to: Deputy Head of Pharmacy

Key Relationships: Deputy Head/Head of Pharmacy, Senior Pharmacists, Head of Operations, PCN Business Manager, Project Team, Service Managers, PCN Clinical Directors, Practice Managers

BACKGROUND

Healthcare Central London is the GP Federation covering the Central London borough area. The organisation supports 31 General Practices and 4 Primary Care Networks (PCNs). We operate a number of NHS contracts including a Care Navigation Service, a Clinical Pharmacy Service, a Community Dermatology Service etc.

Our vision is to be recognised as a leading GP provider network, run by clinicians for the benefit of our local population. We will achieve this by working with patients and partners to ensure that general practice remains sustainable and independent.

Our approach is to deliver exceptional assistance to our 31 General Practice members and to operate our NHS contracts in a manner that supports our Practices and their patients by providing services economically, locally, promptly, and in a familiar environment.

JOB ROLE

The Pharmacy Technician will support the medicine management role of the Clinical Pharmacy team to deliver safe and efficient medication safety processes, which would include supporting a cluster of different GP practices. The successful applicant will be enrolled onto a training programme (CPPE) and also provided with guidance and training by a Senior Pharmacist in the team.

One of the responsibilities of the role would be to assist practices with making cost effective switches for medication (guided by the Senior Management team) to improve GP practice budget sustainability (e.g. switching away from expensive brands to generic brands).

The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications via an agreed protocol, as well as improving repeat prescribing processes in general practices, including promotion of online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.

In addition, the post holder will be responsible for encouraging the development of better understanding of the principles of medicines optimisation throughout the practice teams and promoting good practice in line with therapeutic developments. This will include monitoring systems and promoting systems already in place relating to drug monitoring and safety, responding to medication alerts received by GP practices, and carrying out some medication reviews with patients.

This will involve assisting the GP Federation in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives. We offer a supportive environment, our Clinical Pharmacist Team already work closely together with our team of Pharmacy Technicians to improve patient care and experience.

Another key responsibility is assisting GP practices with discharge summaries and medication requests. Discharge summaries are correspondence received from the hospital to the GP practice, which will on occasion ask the GP practice to make amendments to a patient’s medication. Pharmacy Technicians can assist with this process and then let a Clinician have the final review. For medication requests, guidance and support will be provided on how to approach these.

KEY TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support the role of the Clinical Pharmacist at PCN level on the delivery of medicines management in the general practice model

• Delivering pharmacy related aspects of the Network DES such as medicines optimisation aspects of the Investment and Impact

• Carry out medicines switches in GP practices in line with practice and ICB agreed specific protocols – reviewing patients’ records; amending records and informing patients

• Carry out housekeeping whilst in patient records e.g. dose optimisation and medicines synchronisation

• Improve prescribing processes in general practice

• Support with appropriate implementation of Electronic Repeat Dispensing as required by individual practices ordering

• Report on key performance indicators for the federation’s clinical pharmacy service to demonstrate added value for patients and general practice in accordance with NICE guidance

• Use and maintain information systems and databases relevant to the position including incident reporting, medicines optimisation, prescribing data, cost savings and patient outcomes

• Work closely with GP practices and the Senior Clinical Pharmacists

• Participate in practice meetings, patient participation groups, and other meetings to improve engagement of the role of pharmacy technician within the federation’s clinical pharmacy team and to promote issues relevant to prescribing and medicines optimisation

• Liaise with other pharmacy stakeholders e.g. ICB Pharmacy team, community pharmacy, and hospital pharmacy teams.

• Support Medicines Optimisation and the delivery of the Medicines Optimisation strategy

• Handle information, which may be sensitive, complex or confidential and appropriately recording, transferring and/or coordinating such information in accordance with the Data Protection Act; Caldicott Guidelines and the Confidentiality Code of Conduct

• To be responsible for the organisation, planning of own workload to meet set deadlines

• To utilise SystmOne, the GP practice clinical systems to conduct prescribing audits (training provided)

• To undertake, participate and share the outcomes of clinical audits to facilitate improvement and changes in practice

• Ensure that all major MHRA drug alerts, where appropriate and within level of competence, are acted upon within practices over an appropriate time frame and to advise on any medication changes that occur as a result

• To assist in the monitoring of prescribing expenditure at individual practice level and propose changes to ensure containment within identified resource

• To undertake learning and development to ensure the required knowledge and skills for practice based work

• To carry out other duties which are appropriate to the skills and competencies of the post holder and grade of the post as the priorities of the service change

• To carry out pertinent tasks associated with COVID-19 vaccine management such as ordering vaccine and record keeping as appropriate.

• Develop a culture that promotes equality and values diversity. The post holder must be aware of and committed to the Equality and Diversity policies of the organisation and comply with all the requirements of these policies and actively promote Equality and Diversity issues relevant to the post.

• Ensure the principles of openness, transparency and candour are observed and upheld in all working practices.

• The post holder will have, or acquire through training provided by the organisation, the appropriate level of safeguarding and knowledge, skills and practice required for the post and be aware of and comply with the organisation’s safeguarding protection policies and procedures.

• Ensure that any infection prevention and control issues are reported to the line manager/Infection Prevention and Control The above list of job duties is not exclusive or exhaustive and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS

The post holder will be required to:

Maintain constructive relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders, including: General Practice, Clinical Pharmacy Team, Central London borough division of North West London ICB, participate in relevant internal and external working groups/projects, services, and initiatives which develop the role and the service within Central London.

Requirements

Criteria

Registration

Description

Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

Essential (E)

Criteria

Education / Training / Qualifications

Description

GPhC-accredited course, GPhC-recognised qualifications or a GPhC approved apprenticeship pathways.

Essential (E)

Criteria

Knowledge and Experience

Description

Recent previous experience within comparable role in General Practice

Previous experience working within a patient facing role

Experience of clinical systems such as SystmOne

Desirable (D)

Criteria

Skills / Abilities

Description

Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written Good IT skills

Good organisational skills

Ability to work under pressure in a busy environment

Ability to work as part of a team

Able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general pharmaceutical care programmes for patients across core areas, including disease states/long term conditions.

Uses skills in a range of routine situations requiring analysis or comparison of a range of options.

Recognises priorities when problem-solving and is able to refer to pharmacists/ senior pharmacists or GPs when appropriate.

Able to follow legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct

Involves patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidelines.

Demonstrate understanding of the pharmacy role in governance and is able to implement this appropriately within the workplace.

Demonstrate understanding of, and contributes to, the workplace vision

Demonstrates ability to improve quality within limitations of service

Reviews yearly progress and develops clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others.

Demonstrate ability to motivate self to achieve goals

Promotes diversity and equality in people management techniques and leads by example

Demonstrate understanding of national and local priorities for the team and/or service and implement tasks accordingly

Demonstrate understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards of practice

Demonstrates ability to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol

Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures relating to performance management

Essential (E)