Prison Services Pharmacy Technician | Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Are you ready to unlock your potential within a challenging, creative and fast paced work environment? Do you want to work with people to build positive and productive lives, whatever their past? This is an excellent opportunity for a pharmacy technician to join our team of diverse, talented healthcare professionals to deliver care that is not only efficient but deeply centred on the patient.

Our healthcare team have a real impact on promoting health and well-being to those in prison and we pride ourselves on using skills and strategies that instil hope for patients’ future resettlement back into the community. We directly deliver Mental Health, Physical Health, Pharmacy and Clinical Substance Misuse in an integrated healthcare delivery model to provide effective and responsive care to improve wellbeing and support better outcomes in the future.

This position isn’t just a job; it’s a chance to blend your clinical knowledge, personal skills and a commitment to delivering the highest standards of care in an environment that is as rewarding as it is challenging.

We welcome applications from both full and part-time applicants. We have a range of shift patterns and days available which can be discussed during interview.

As a Pharmacy Technician, you will be providing a medicines management service to patients within the prison with the professional support of a prison service pharmacist. You will administer medicines to patients against a valid prescription, ensuring this is taken correctly, provide advice to patients about the appropriate use of medicines and promote healthy lifestyles to aid their rehabilitation. You will dispense prescriptions and stock items, whilst supervising assistants when in the dispensary. There will also be elements of stock control involved in your role, such as undertaking stock top-up services and reviewing expiry dates and storage facilities for all medicines, reporting any deficiencies to the prison service pharmacist.

Wondering what it’s like to work within offender healthcare? “I really enjoy working in the Pharmacy Service for Oxleas, my role is extremely varied and I work within a very supportive team. I find my role rewarding as it is all about enabling patients’ rehabilitation and I enjoy interacting with patients daily and building relationships with them. Oxleas are a good employer and there are plenty of opportunities to be supported through qualifications and training which then allows you to progress through different bands within the team.” Amanda - Pharmacy Tech.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives.

Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes. We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people. Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families.

This is strengthened by our new values:

• To provide a medicines optimisation service to the prison.
• To provide a medicines administration service to offenders at the medicines administration times as part of a 7 day per week rota.
• To undertake medicines reconciliation for prisoners admitted to the prison.
• To supervise assistants, when in the dispensary in providing dispensing services.
• To be an accredited checking technician providing final dispensing checks or medicines optimisation qualification.
• To ensure high standards of work in the dispensary, in clinics and for when out on the wings and to ensure all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are read and adhered to.
• To assist the Senior Prisons Technician with writing, updating and monitoring the use of medicines optimisation SOPs.

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team. You will need to provide:

• Proof of right to work documentation
• Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID
• Proof of address documentation
• Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.
• Address History: 5 years address history will be needed.
• Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.
• Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants. If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en).