Rochford District Primary Care Network (PCN) have a fantastic opportunity for a permanent Pharmacy Technician to join our team. This position is offered on a part-time basis, working 19 hours per week, over Tuesday and Wednesday, covering the following practice:
Main duties of the job
- Support the clinical pharmacist and other clinicians as the point of contact for medicines related matters.
- Process repeat medication requests, including the conversion of acute requests to repeat medicines, changing quantities of medicines.
- Issue prescriptions in line with agreed clinical protocols and within your competency.
- Encourage cost-effective prescribing throughout the practice.
- Undertake medicines reconciliation post discharge and on other transfers of care.
- Update and maintain accurate and timely patient medication records on each practice clinical system, including advice given and action taken.
- Monitor practice adherence to the prescribing policy.
Please see job description attached for more information.
About us
All of our PCN staff are employed by GP Healthcare Alliance (GPHA). GPHA values staff & can offer:
- A supportive & friendly working environment.
- Support with training & development.
- Reimbursement for parking & travel expenses for attending meetings/off site sessions.
- All flexible offers and working arrangements will be considered.
Addressing health inequalities at a local level by using data & local intelligence through partnership with local Wellbeing Link Coordinators to reduce social isolation.
Enhancing our staff & wellbeing by upskilling our local workforce to make general practice an attractive place to work. Supporting our staff to have access to relevant training & development opportunities so that they are continuing to improve the care that they are providing to patients.
Improving patients access to various different services in their local community to ensure that they have the right care at the right time with the right professional.
Supporting our member practices & the local population with recovering from the long term effects of COVID-19.
Job responsibilities
The post holder is a member of the Primary Care Network (PCN) Additional Roles team providing Pharmacy support to the network practices. Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting programme of transformation to develop a new model of care which addresses our ambition to deliver person-centred, coordinated care in our Practices.
Pharmacy technicians play an important role, complementing clinical pharmacists, community pharmacists and other members of the PCN multi-disciplinary team. Pharmacy technicians are different to clinical pharmacists as they are not able to prescribe or make clinical decisions, instead working under supervision to ensure effective and efficient use of medicines.
The purpose of the role is to lead improvements to maximise safe, cost-effective best practice in prescribing to improve the quality of patient care. The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in General Practice, including promotion of repeat dispensing and 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 involve assisting the PCN in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation, and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives.
Job Responsibilities
- Work with the Clinical Pharmacists and Clinicians in accordance with agreed practice prescribing standard operating procedures.
- Process repeat medication requests, including the conversion of acute requests to repeat medicines, changing quantities of medicines. Processing prescriptions in line with agreed clinical protocols and within your competency.
- As determined by the PCN, support medication reviews/monitoring and medicines reconciliation post discharge (or other transfer of care) and synchronizing medicines for patients especially if transferring between care settings, linking with local community pharmacists.
- Undertake patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with patients.
- Support Clinicians and Clinical Pharmacists in Structured Medication Reviews (SMR) i.e. organise necessary monitoring tests prior to SMR.
- Manage shared care protocols and liaise with Clinical Pharmacist for more complex patients.
- To develop and maintain medicines related communication to all practice staff.
- To assist with the development and review of medicines audits.
- Provide contact for patients and colleagues with medication queries.
- Support with project work/prescribing initiatives/clinical audits under the support of the pharmacist.
- Liaise with clinicians and staff to resolve prescribing queries.
- To support the management and development of the prescribing systems to ensure safe, effective, and quality prescribing within member practices in the network.
Key tasks
Prescribing
- Dealing with medication queries including acute medication requests, patient medication and prescription queries. This may involve removing unwanted items, checking review dates, ensuring necessary blood tests, and monitoring have been carried out, prescription synchronization etc.
- Communicating with patients/carers and members of the healthcare team including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and receptionists.
- Liaising with local pharmacies and hospitals regarding prescription queries and helping to ensure optimum therapy and to ensure a smooth transition from Secondary to primary care.
- Answer ad hoc medication drug queries from GPs, nurses, and other healthcare professionals within the post holders expertise.
- Updating of medication received from secondary care on the patient medical record, where appropriate.
- To problem solve issues related to prescribing.
- To support the lead GP for prescribing with clinical administration, projects, and audits to improve services and initiatives to enhance safety, quality, and cost effectiveness of prescribing (e.g., Prescribing Quality Scheme, MHRA updates etc.).
- To work as an autonomously and be capable of prioritising work whilst maintaining accurate and timely records.
Other Duties
- To facilitate and participate in multidisciplinary meetings and education sessions related to prescribing topics.
- To always keep professional up to date and to meet the General Pharmaceutical Council standards for continuing professional development to maintain professional registration.
- To ensure that all information is recorded accurately using computer systems and paper if required.
- To ensure maintenance of accurate patient records and ensure all relevant information is documented in the patients medical record in a timely manner.
- This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the post holder may be required to undertake other duties that fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with line manager and clinical pharmacist.
- Support initiatives for antimicrobial stewardship to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.
- Providing leadership for medicines optimisation systems across the PCN, supporting practices with a range of services to get best value from medicines by encouraging and implementing Electronic Prescriptions, safe repeat prescribing systems, and timely monitoring and management of high-risk medicines.
Person SpecificationExperience
- Experience of working as a qualified, registered pharmacy technician in primary care, community, or hospital pharmacy.
- Portfolio evidence of ongoing Continuous Professional Development.
- Experience of delegation and supervision.
- Experience of working flexibly and effectively within a multidisciplinary team.
- Experience of having to prioritise caseload/manage own time effectively.
- Experience of managing change and conflict situations.
- Experience of Audit.
Skill and other
- Be able to carry out the duties of this post
- Excellent oral and written communication skills with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
- Good presentation skills and ability for work effectively with individuals and groups.
- Ability to present complex information in a clear and logical manner.
- Ability to understand and work within the organisations and practices policies.
- Good organisational skills to manage and prioritise caseload.
- Confident.
- Self-motivated.
- Flexible, adaptable, and creative.
- Able to respond to unpredicted work patterns and frequent interruptions.
- Able to set priorities and meet daily deadlines.
- Able to organise complex information.
- Good understanding of the principles of confidentiality.
- The ability to respond positively to changes within the Primary Care Network.
- Consistently thinks about how their work can help and support clinicians and frontline staff deliver better outcomes for patients.
- Able to travel across various sites where applicable.
Qualifications
- NVQ Level 3 / BTECH in pharmacy services or equivalent nationally recognised qualification
- Current registration as a pharmacy technician with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).
- Enrolled in, undertaking, or qualified from, an approved training pathway. For example, the Primary Care Pharmacy Educational Pathway (PCPEP) or Medicines Optimisation in Care Homes (MOCH) or courses approved by the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK).
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
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