Primary Care Pharmacy Technician

Job responsibilities

Job Title: Primary Care Pharmacy Technician

Job Location: South Hams Primary Care Network Locality

Responsible to: PCN Lead Pharmacist / Clinical Lead

Hours of work: 37.5 hour (job share may be considered)

Salary: Band 5 equivalent (depending on experience)

JOB SUMMARY

The South Hams Primary Care Network has an exciting opportunity for a new Pharmacy Technician post in Primary Care.

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 across the South Hams Primary Care Network (PCN). The overall aim is to pro-actively help patients stay safe and well and out of hospital as well as helping to reduce the demands on general practice.

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.

Pharmacy technicians core role responsibilities will cover clinical, technical and administrative categories.

The primary care pharmacy technician role is intended to support the Primary Care Pharmacists to ensure the delivery of safe, effective and efficient systems for repeat prescribing, medicines optimisation, reducing medicines waste and maximising patient outcomes.

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 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.

This job is intended for a technician with up to date registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council. Experience in General Practice would be an advantage but is not essential if the applicant is clinically up-to-date and understands the process of a full medication review in the primary care setting.

The technician appointed will be expected to maintain their clinical competence with appropriate continuing professional development, and provide evidence of this annually to the Primary Care Network.

Qualifications

Essential

• 1. Registered with the GPhC as a Pharmacy Technician, BTEC /NVQ level 3 or equivalent in pharmaceutical sciences
• 2. Evidence of continued professional development (CPD)

Desirable

• 1. Medicines reconciliation Certificate or equivalent

Experience

Essential

• 1. Experience of working as a qualified pharmacy technician in primary care, community or hospital pharmacy

Desirable

• 1. xperience of using prescribing/clinical systems such as EMIS Web and SystmOne
• 2. Previous experience within comparable role in General Practice
• 3. Previous experience working within a patient facing role
• 4. Experience of working with CCGs / PCTs
• 5. Experience of partnership/collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• 1. Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written
• 2. Knowledge of IT systems, including ability to use word processing skills, emails and the internet to create simple plans and reports
• 3. Good organisational skills
• 4. Ability to work under pressure in a busy environment
• 5. Ability to work as part of a team
• 6. Motivational & negotiation skills
• 7. An appreciation of the NHS agenda and Government targets for PCNs
• 8. Has attention to detail, able to work accurately, identifying errors quickly and easily
• 9. Time management skills. Ability to plan, prioritise and organise workload
• 10. People Management
• 11. Ability to make decisions

Desirable

• 1. Knowledge of audit and able to analyse and interpret prescribing data
• 2. Relevant advanced theoretical and practical knowledge of Primary Care Networks, General Practice and evidence based medicine
• 3. Teaching Skills
• 4. Able to obtain and analyse complex technical information
• 5. Able to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol

Personal Qualities & Attributes

Essential

• 1. Continued commitment to improve skills and ability in new areas of work
• 2. Demonstrates accountability for work completed
• 3. Understanding of clinical governance and risk management
• 4. Self-motivated - ability to work flexibly and enthusiastically within a team or on own initiative
• 5. Awareness of Medicines Management agenda
• 6. Is able to recognise personal limitations and refer to more appropriate colleague(s) when necessary
• 7. Able to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• 8. Ability to identify risk and assess/manage risk when working with individuals
• 9. Knowledge of and ability to work to policies and procedures, including confidentiality, safeguarding, lone working, information governance, and health and safety

Other

Essential

• 1. Ability to work flexibly with the ability to travel between sites and undertake domiciliary visits
• 2. Valid driving licence
• 3. Innovative
• 4. Immunisation status
• 5. Meets DBS reference standards and has a clear criminal record, in line with the law on spent convictions

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).