PCN Senior Pharmacy Technician

Job Summary

Pharmacy Technicians work across our group of 12 GP Practices across the Rugby area, supporting the Practice-based Clinical Pharmacists to ensure the delivery of safe, effective and efficient systems for repeat prescribing, medicines optimisation, reducing medicines waste and maximising patient outcomes.

The post-holder will work under appropriate clinical supervision to ensure safe, effective and efficient use of medicines and be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and enrolled in, undertaking or qualified from, an approved training pathway i.e. CPPE Primary Care Pharmacy Education Pathway training unless otherwise exempt. (refer to Person Spec).
Excellent communication skills, enthusiasm and motivation are essential skills for a successful candidate.

You will be dealing with daily medication requests and queries, communicating with patients and
Community Pharmacies. Additionally, the post holder will be responsible for encouraging the
development of better understanding of the principles of medicines optimisation throughout the practice teams by promoting good practice in line with therapeutic developments. This will involve assisting the Practices in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation, and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Pharmacy Technician has the following key clinical, and technical and administrative responsibilities,in delivering health services:

Clinical Responsibilities:

• Undertake patient facing and patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with patients;
• Carry out medicines optimisation tasks including effective medicine administration (e.g. checking inhaler technique), supporting medication reviews, and medicines reconciliation. Where required,utilise consultation skills to work in partnership with patients to ensure they use their medicines effectively;
• Support, as determined by the PCN, medication reviews and medicines reconciliation for new
  care home patients and synchronising medicines for patient transfers between care settings andlinking with local community pharmacists.

Job Description

• Provide specialist expertise, where competent, to address both the public health and social care needs of patients, including lifestyle advice, service information, and help in tackling local health inequalities; e. take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols and liaising with specialist pharmacists for more complex patients;
• Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols and liaising with specialist
  pharmacists for more complex patients;
• Support initiatives for antimicrobial stewardship to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing;
• Assist in the delivery of medicines optimisation and management incentive schemes and patient safety audits;
• Support the implementation of national prescribing policies and guidance within GP practices,
  care homes and other primary care settings. This will be achieved through undertaking clinical
  audits (e.g. use of antibiotics), supporting quality improvement measures and contributing to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and enhanced services;
  Technical and Administrative Responsibilities:
• Work with the PCN multi-disciplinary team to ensure efficient medicines optimisation, including implementing efficient ordering and return processes, and reducing wastage;
• Supervise practice reception teams in sorting and streaming general prescription requests, so as to allow GPs and clinical pharmacists to review the more clinically complex requests;
• Provide leadership for medicines optimisation systems across the PCN, supporting practices with a range of services to get the best value from medicines by encouraging and implementing
  Electronic Prescriptions, safe repeat prescribing systems, and timely monitoring and management of high-risk medicines;
• Provide training and support on the legal, safe and secure handling of medicines, including the implementation of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
• Develop relationships with other pharmacy technicians, pharmacists and members of the multi
  disciplinary team to support integration of the pharmacy team across health and social care
  including primary care, community pharmacy, secondary care, and mental health
• Handle specific 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 and planning of own workload to meet set deadlines
• To undertake learning and development to maintain 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
• Any other duties as may be requested by the Clinical Lead or Operations Director of the PCN
  This job description is not exhaustive and may be subject to amendment in response to changes in the Directed Enhanced Services (DES) contract or other relevant commissioning arrangements.
  This job description may be reviewed in the light of changing organisational and service needs. Any changes will be discussed with the post holder. The post holder may also be required to carry out other work commensurate with the post and remuneration.

For further duties and responsibilities, please check the Job Description.

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.