Lead Pharmacy Technician - Dispensaries

Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust is a friendly, integrated healthcare provider focused on improving the life chances and health outcomes of our diverse population. We have three strategic objectives:

• People: To cultivate and sustain happy, productive and engaged staff;
• Patients: To be good or outstanding at everything we do;
• Population: To work seamlessly with partners to improve lives.

Our next milestone is opening the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital (MMUH), a once in a career opportunity to shape care transformation within and beyond the hospital walls. Developing and caring for our People is fundamental. We were one of the first Trusts to provide the Real Living Wage, as well as a Live and Work scheme to support people at risk of homelessness into paid work and training. We offer a range of staff benefits, health & wellbeing support and will help you to bring your ambition to life through our bespoke training and development programmes. As “People” is one of our three strategic objectives, we make a continued commitment to prioritise support for all our colleagues. Healthcare services have a significant impact on the environment. We are committed to embedding sustainable practices. We expect all colleagues to support the delivery of our Green Strategic Plan and to drive positive changes in their department.

Hello! I’m Prit, I’m the Chief Pharmacy tech in Operations at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust. The Pharmacy Department at SWB has officially moved into our brand new Midland Metropolitan University Hospital (MMUH) and we are looking to welcome an ambitious, driven and motivated Pharmacy Technician to lead our Dispensaries. Are you a registered Pharmacy Technician who has a passion for working within the dispensary? Do you have exceptional leadership qualities and can motivate staff and provide structure and leadership across the dispensary services at SWB? If so, this role is for you. You will be supported by the Chief Pharmacy Technician in Operations, another Lead Technician in Dispensaries, and Dispensary coordinators in overseeing the day-to-day dispensary workload and staffing, ensuring that service standards and targets are met including; prescription turnaround times, accuracy, cost effectiveness, and customer service standards. You will also be involved in the continuous quality service improvements throughout the dispensary services. We also have another new state-of-the-art Pharmacy Dispensary (Sheldon Block Pharmacy) which you will be overseeing which is due to open early 2025.

Main duties of the job:

• Provide leadership and management of staff, processes, procedures and workload/workforce planning and development of the dispensary services.
• Ensure patients and staff receive excellent service and medications are dispensed in a safe and efficient manner which meets set KPIs.
• Manage risks, errors and near misses in the various dispensary environments, ensuring risks are identified and mitigated.
• Coordinate and lead on investigations and outcomes to incidents, errors and complaints received regarding the dispensary environments.
• Continuously contribute to service improvements.

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust (SWBT) is an integrated care organisation with a budget of approximately £600 million and over 7,000 staff. Diversity and social care is at the core of what we do as the Trust provides Community and Acute Services to over half a million people in an urban centre that demands massive regeneration and has substantial premature mortality. Our new acute hospital, the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital (MMUH), is now open and will provide care to our local population from first-class, purpose-built premises. As a result, the base of this role may change to MMUH from 2024 (or beyond). If this is applicable to your role, you will be informed during the recruitment process and continuing your application with this understanding. The development of the new hospital will play an important role in the regeneration of the wider area and in improving the lives of local people and reducing health inequalities.

Person specification:

Qualifications:

• NVQ3, BTEC or equivalent in pharmaceutical science
• Must be registered with General Pharmaceutical Council
• CPD post qualification experience through a series of short and long-term courses to obtain specialist knowledge relevant to area of practice. All of which, together is the equivalent to degree level
• Accredited Checking technicians award (ACPT)

Experience:

• Experience of working as a senior technician in a hospital environment.
• Proven experience of supervising and management of staff
• Computer literate, with a proven ability to search for relevant information on various databases, and evaluate data in order to formulate a response to enquiries.
• Problem-solving skills and approach on a wide range of highly complex clinical and non-clinical issues requiring analysis, interpretation and judgement.
• Proven ability to dispense medicines and information regarding medications accurately without making errors.
• Proven ability to check medicines dispensed by others and to detect any errors that may have been made.
• Experience in dispensing clinical trials.
• Working knowledge of a broad range of medicines and their safety issues.
• Experienced in writing departmental procedures.

Written and analytical skills:

• Ability to read and understand complex information.
• Ability and experience of writing and implementing SOPs.
• Supervised and managed staff/Line management.
• Experience of carrying out PDR's.
• Complex sickness management.
• Ability to co-ordinate workflows.
• Plan and organise own workload.

Knowledge:

• Up-to-date knowledge of medicines legislation and legal requirements for dispensing and supplying medications.
• Knowledge of health and safety and COSHH regulations.

Mental effort:

• Ability to work under pressure.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with frequent interruptions.
• Ability to accurately dispense and final check for long periods.

As a major employer in the Black Country and West Birmingham region we are committed to supporting all employees to achieve a healthy work-life balance. We want the Black Country and West Birmingham region to be the best place to work and as such will consider all requests to work flexibly taking into account personal and individual circumstances alongside the needs of the service. We encourage all prospective applicants to discuss their individual circumstances with the Recruiting Manager as part of the on-boarding process. You must have appropriate UK professional registration. This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

To arrange an informal visit or chat regarding the role please email Pritiben Narshi on pritiben.narshi2@nhs.net or contact 07811425269.