Pharmacy Technician in Doncaster

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Pharmacy Technician to join our current network Pharmacy team consisting of Clinical Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians to support the performance of 4Doncaster Primary Care Network.

Main duties of the job:

• The ideal candidate will have a strong teamwork ethic, sense of accountability, accompanied by the ability to work under pressure.
• They will be expected to have good communication skills and be involved in a varied range of activities to promote safe, high quality, cost effective prescribing.
• The candidate should be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) as a Pharmacy Technician and possess a portfolio of evidence of continuous professional development and post-qualification experience; preferably within a healthcare setting.
• The successful candidate will need to be flexible in their approach to work as the role will be working across the Primary Care Network within the four practices in the Network.

Job responsibilities:

• Provide technical support to clinical pharmacist and other pharmacy services within the Primary Care Network.
• Ensure delivery of safe, effective and efficient systems for medicines.
• Support implementation of national prescribing policies, including Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).
• Provide support to patients.
• A requirement of this role is to complete the Primary Care Pharmacy Education pathway which is around 12 months duration.

Hours: Tuesday 8:00am - 1:00pm, Friday 8:00am - 6:00pm. Please note, this PCN has a no working from home policy.

About us:

The 4Doncaster Primary Care Network was established by four practices situated in central Doncaster: The Burns Medical Practice, The Kingthorne Group Practice, The Mount Group Practice, The St Vincent Group Practice. The network population is approximately 63000 patients spread equally across the four practices.

The practices have come together as a network in order to be able to respond in a flexible and responsive manner to changes taking place in the NHS. The establishment of the 4Doncaster network has enabled the recruitment of additional staff, including Clinical Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians, Physiotherapists, Social Prescribers, Mental Health Practitioners, Care Coordinators and Health & Wellbeing Coaches.

Key Responsibilities:

• Undertake a patient supporting role 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 and linking with local community pharmacists.
• 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.
• 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.
• Reconcile the medications of patients whose care is transferred back to primary care in a timely and effective manner liaising with patients and other providers to ensure patients receive appropriate medication on discharge.
• Proactively engage with patients whose care has been transferred to reduce potential readmission including identifying and rectifying unexplained variation.
• Work with pharmacy service team to develop safe, effective and efficient systems for the repeat prescribing of medication at scale across the four GP sites.
• Work with pharmacy service team to develop and implement systems to ensure the effective and continuous supply of medication to high risk patients.
• Work with pharmacy service team to develop and implement systems to ensure safe and effective management of high risk medication.
• Work with pharmacy service team to develop and implement changes to medicines in line with MHRA alerts, product withdrawal and other local or national guidance.
• Provide feedback and seek advice from pharmacist for patients where the post holder has clinical concerns around competence to safely manage their medications.
• Manage requests to prescribe medication from specialists in line with Doncaster CCG formulary and locally agreed guidelines.
• Update patient medication records in line with incoming clinical correspondence.
• Refer patients to their community pharmacist for support with using their medicines.
• Provide advice to GPs, staff and patients in changes to prescribing to support the improvement of prescribing safety, quality and cost effectiveness.
• Respond to medication queries from patients and staff in a professional manner referring to the appropriate clinician in accordance with protocols and personal and professional boundaries.
• Provide support to patients to maximise the benefit from their medication.
• Provide telephone support for patients with medication queries.
• Provide professional telephone and written advice and support to patients and their carers.
• Maintain full and complete records of all patient contacts using appropriate clinical templates and coding.
• 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 PCNs, 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.

Qualifications:

• Registered with the GPhC as a Pharmacy Technician.
• Portfolio of evidence of continuous professional development and post-qualifying experience.
• Membership with Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
• Medicines Reconciliation Certificate or equivalent.

Experience:

• Understanding of professional ethics and application in practice.
• Experience of prioritising workload and meeting deadlines.
• Previous experience working within a patient facing role.
• Experience of prescribing/clinical systems such as SystmOne.
• Recent previous experience with comparable role in Primary Care / General Practice.
• Able to undertake audit/quality improvement methodology.

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.