PCN Pharmacy Technician

Rugby Health is recruiting a Pharmacy Technician to work across our 12 GP Practices in the Rugby area, under the supervision of the Practice-based Clinical Pharmacists. You'll join our growing Pharmacy team, to support and ensure the delivery of safe, effective, efficient systems for repeat prescribing and medicine optimisation to reduce medicine waste and maximise patient outcomes. The successful candidate will be confident working independently, handling the technical administration related to the role, whilst working under appropriate clinical supervision to ensure safe, effective and efficient use of medicines.

You will be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and enrolled in, undertaking or qualified from, an approved training pathway i.e. CPPE Primary Care Education Pathway training unless otherwise exempt. The role is 100% practice-based, and the successful candidate will demonstrate innovative ideas, excellent communication skills, enthusiasm and motivation. You will be patient-facing, dealing with daily medication requests and queries, communicating with patients and Community Pharmacies and with responsibility for encouraging the development of better understanding of the principles of medicines optimisation throughout the practice teams, promoting good practice in line with therapeutic developments. You will assist the Practices in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives.

Main duties of the job

• 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 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;
• 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;
• See the detailed JD for further duties.

Job responsibilities

• Manage incoming medication requests, e.g. from patients, pharmacies, care homes etc.;
• Assist the Practice admin team with medication queries;
• Liaise with patients to resolve queries and support their use of medication;
• Contribute towards improvement of prescribing processes in general practice;
• Promotion of electronic repeat dispensing and online ordering;
• Carry out housekeeping whilst in patient records e.g. dose optimisation and medicines synchronisation;
• Use and maintain information systems and databases relevant to the position including incident reporting, medicines optimisation, prescribing data, cost savings and patient outcomes;
• Handle function specific information, which may be sensitive, complex or confidential and appropriately record, transfer and/or coordinate such information in accordance with the Data Protection Act; Caldicott Guidelines and the Confidentiality Code of Conduct;
• Utilise GP practice clinical systems to conduct prescribing audits;
• Participate and share the outcomes of clinical audits to facilitate improvement and changes in practice;
• Support the role of the Clinical Pharmacist on the delivery of the new Primary Care Networks specification model;
• Where applicable, contribute/participate in practical meetings, patient participation groups, and other meetings to improve engagement of the role of pharmacy technician and to promote issues relevant to prescribing and medicines optimisation;
• Be responsible for the organisation and planning of own workload to meet set deadlines;
• Undertake learning and development to maintain the required knowledge and skills for practice-based work;
• 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.

Person Specification

• Comfortably computer literate with an ability to use clinical systems (desirable) and Microsoft Office packages (essential);
• Understand the aims of current healthcare policy within the PCN;
• Able to analyse and interpret prescribing data;
• Has attention to detail, able to work accurately, identifying errors quickly and easily;
• Able to effectively manage allocated resources;
• Has a planned and organised approach with an ability to prioritise their own workload to meet strict deadlines;
• Able to think analytically; anticipating obstacles and thinking ahead; using analytical techniques to draw logical solutions to problems;
• Excellent communication skills, verbal and written, with the ability to adjust communication style and content to suit the audience;
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with team members, patients, carers, and other healthcare professionals. Whilst recognising peoples needs for alternative methods of communication;
• Influencing and negotiating skills;
• An excellent understanding of data protection and confidentiality issues;
• EMIS User Skills;
• Experience of medicines reconciliation;
• Understanding of community pharmacy systems;
• Ability to develop and implement policy and procedure to sustain a quality service;
• Understanding of QOF/PCN DES/IIF.

Qualifications

• GpHC Registration as a Pharmacy Technician;
• BTEC/NVQ level 3 or equivalent in pharmacy services;
• Accredited checking technician.

Other

• Full UK driving licence and access to own vehicle as travel across the PCN network is required to fulfil business needs.

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 to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Reference number A5360-26-0005

Job locations

Various locations across the PCN footprint.