ARRS Pharmacy Technician in Sutton Coldfield

Pharmacy Technicians can help play an important role, complementing clinical pharmacists, community pharmacists and other members of the PCN multi-disciplinary team. While Pharmacy Technicians do not prescribe nor make clinical decisions, they do work under supervision to ensure the effective and efficient use of medicines. In the PCN, their core responsibilities can cover clinical, technical, and administrative roles. The purpose of the role is to maximise safe and cost-effective prescribing, to improve the quality of patient care. The post-holder will help patients get the best from their medicines, use existing protocols to maximise cost-effective preparations, improve repeat prescribing processes (including use of electronic repeat dispensing and online ordering), minimising clinical risk and reducing avoidable medicines wastage. The post-holder will also develop and encourage a positive culture of medicines optimisation principles, to assist the PCN in achieving local and national medicines-related objectives.

Main duties of the job:

• Where a PCN employs or engages one or more Pharmacy Technicians under the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme, the PCN must ensure that each Pharmacy Technician has the key clinical, technical and administrative responsibilities as outlined below for delivering health services.
• The post holder is a Pharmacy Technician and is an integral part of the general practice team, working within their professional boundaries in each practice within the Primary Care Network (PCN).
• This role will work under the supervision of the PCN clinical pharmacist to ensure the safe, accurate and timely supply of prescribed medication to patients.
• They will provide technical and administrative support to the PCN clinical pharmacist and clinicians.
• The pharmacy technician will support the PCN and practice clinical teams with queries around medication from patients.
• The pharmacy technician will complete audits around patient safety in the prescribing of medication and present the information for sharing with the clinical team.

About us:

Sutton has a population of approximately 200,000 residents registered to 21 practices and there are currently 4 Primary Care Networks each serving a population of approximately 50,000 patients. Our Sutton PCNs are forward-looking, friendly, and focused on providing a wide range of excellent healthcare services to patients in Sutton and the surrounding area. Our PCNs between them are led by 8 PCN Clinical Directors. The PCNs work together as they see the benefits of working together in a larger GP partnership and are delighted to be realising some of those benefits now. Because of our scale, not only are we more resilient and efficient but we are able to invest in continuous quality improvement, enhanced care, new services, and training and developing our workforce. We value the diversity of our colleagues and actively champion an inclusive culture and are committed to helping our colleagues achieve a work/life balance.

Job responsibilities:

• The Pharmacy Technician is to undertake the following clinical responsibilities in delivering health services:

• Undertake patient facing and patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with patients.
• Conduct medicines optimisation tasks including effective medicine 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 synchronise medicines for patient transfers between care settings and linking with local community services.
• 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.
• Maintain a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols and liaise 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. This will be achieved through undertaking clinical audits (e.g., use of antibiotics), supporting quality improvement measures and contributing to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and the Investment and Impact Fund (IIF) objectives.
• Attend a formal appraisal with your manager at least every 12 months. Once a performance/training objective has been set, progress will be reviewed on a regular basis so that new objectives can be agreed.
• Contribute to public health campaigns through advice or direct care.
• Maintain a clean, tidy, effective working area at all times.

Person Specification:

• Personal Qualities: Professional and positive. Leading by example. Adhering to Sutton PCN Core Values. Meet DBS reference standards and have a clear criminal record (not subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974).
• Qualifications: Registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC). Meets the specific qualification and training requirements as specified by the GPhC criteria to register as a Pharmacy Technician. Enrolled in, undertaking or qualified from, an approved training pathway. For example, the Primary Care Pharmacy Educational Pathway (PCPEP) or Medicines Optimisation in Care Homes (MOCH). Evidence of commitment to and able to demonstrate CPD including Management qualification and professional development. Mandatory requirement to complete CPPE within 2 years of starting and it’s an 18 month course if not achieved.
• Experience: Minimum 2 years post-qualification experience in a hospital, community, or general practice setting. Working in primary care including Emis knowledge of IT NHS. Is working under appropriate clinical supervision to ensure safe, effective and efficient use of medicines. Understanding and knowledge of healthcare provision in GP practices, QOF, PCN Network Contract DES and IIF. An appreciation of the new NHS landscape including the relationships between individual practices, PCNs and the knowledge of the breadth of common acute and long-term conditions that are likely to be seen in general practice. Experience of collaborative working and of building relationships across a variety of organisations. Able to undertake medication or medicine use reviews and offer patient counselling. Experience of facilitating change to improve clinical practice. Experience in undertaking clinical audit.
• Competency Skills: Interpersonal skills self-assessment. Pharmacotherapy knowledge. Patient and pharmaceutical care. Systems-based care and population health. Information analysis. Teamwork. PCNs core values.
• Skills & Abilities: Ability to cope with stress. In-depth therapeutic and clinical knowledge of the principles of evidence-based healthcare. An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies for improvement. Ability to prioritise and work to deadlines, often with frequent interruptions and urgent requests. Excellent interpersonal, influencing and communication skills. Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences. Ability to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general medicine optimisation issues in core areas for long term conditions. Ability to obtain and analyse complex technical information. Recognises priorities when problem solving and identifies deviations from the normal pattern and is able to refer to seniors or GPs when appropriate. Produce timely and informative reports. Work effectively, independently and as a team member. Build credibility and rapport (personal and organisational) quickly and easily. Able to engage rapidly and consistently with existing stakeholders and networks.

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.

£32,760 to £33,600 a year depending on experience such as CPPE achievement.