PCN Pharmacy Technician in Rugby

Rugby Health are looking for a Pharmacy Technician to work across our group of 12 GP Practices in the Rugby area, under the supervision of the Practice-based Clinical Pharmacists. You will 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 used to working autonomously, handling the technical administration related to the role, working under appropriate clinical supervision to ensure safe, effective and efficient use of medicines. The post-holder 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 dealing with daily medication requests and queries, communicating with patients and Community Pharmacies and be responsible 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. This will involve assisting the Practices in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives.

You will join our Clinical Pharmacy team to:

• 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.

Please see JD for further duties - see documents.

Right to work checks: All applicants invited for interview will need to prove their right to work in the UK at the interview stage. We are not able to offer sponsorship for this role. Interviews will take place in early April. Please ensure you complete all sections of the application form fully and accurately as incomplete applications may not be shortlisted.

Rugby Health is a private company limited by shares, wholly owned by all the Rugby GP practices. As a GP led organisation, we represent 12 GP practice shareholders and cover over 126,500 patients. We describe our work as building on the core of current primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care. Our aim is to move from reactively providing appointments to proactively caring for the people and communities we serve.

• On-site parking at GP practices where available
• Flexible hours and working arrangements considered from day 1
• Dynamic and adaptable team
• Training and support, enabling you to develop within the role as you will be actively supported to complete the appropriate CPD
• You will be registered with the GPhC as a Pharmacy Technician and will be expected to undertake the CPPE Primary Care Pharmacy Education Pathway training unless otherwise exempt.

• Manage incoming medication requests, e.g. from Patients, Pharmacies, Care Homes etc.
• Assisting the Practice admin team/s 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 recording, transferring and/or coordinating such information in accordance with the Data Protection Act; Caldicott Guidelines and the Confidentiality Code of Conduct.
• To utilise GP practice clinical systems to conduct prescribing audits.
• To undertake, 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 practice 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.
• 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.

Experience:

• 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.

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

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

Various locations across the PCN footprint. £35,102 a year (FTE) with eligibility for NHS Pension Scheme. Contract: Permanent.