Pharmacy Technician - Old Court House Surgery in Sutton Coldfield

Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting programme of transformation to develop a new model of care across the PCN. This model is supported by national policy including the Five Year Forward View and GP Forward View to better utilise the role of pharmacy professionals within the wider healthcare team. Overarching goals are to help keep patients safe and well out of hospital and reduce the demands on general practice with regards medicines use. 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.

Main duties of the job

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.

Central Sutton PCN is looking to employ Pharmacy Technicians under the additional roles reimbursement scheme. They will be accountable to the Primary Care Networks, working in individual Practices within Central Sutton and most likely allocated to specific practices to work closely with and support that practice team. These individuals may also work across all PCNs in some cases where flexibility allows and for the purposes of cross cover and to ensure general practice resilience in Sutton. Working within their area of clinical competence and as part of a multi-disciplinary team. They will be supported by a Senior Clinical Pharmacist and others who will develop, manage, and mentor them. The role will be patient-facing and a pharmacy technician will help support pharmacists with structured medication reviews.

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

Clinical Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Attend a formal appraisal with your manager at least every 12 months.
• Contribute to public health campaigns through advice or direct care.
• Maintain a clean, tidy, effective working area at all times.

Technical & administrative responsibilities

• 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 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.
• 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.
• Support delivery of QOF, IIF, incentive schemes, QIPP and other quality or cost effectiveness initiatives.
• Undertake any tasks consistent with the level of the post and the scope of the role, ensuring that work is delivered in a timely and effective manner.
• Duties may vary from time to time without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility.

Implement local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations

Monitor practice prescribing against local, national and formulary guidelines and make recommendations to GPs for medicines that should be prescribed only by the hospital or subject to shared care agreements. Work with GPs and patients to implement NICE and other evidence-based guidelines to improve the quality, safety and cost effectiveness of prescribing.

Medicine information to practice staff and patients

Answer relevant medicine-related queries from GPs, other network staff, healthcare teams and patients. Suggest and recommend solutions and/or possible alternatives around out of stock medications.

Person Specification

Experience

• Working in Community pharmacy or similar level hospital experience.
• Working under appropriate clinical supervision to ensure safe, effective and efficient use of medicines.

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.
• Evidence of commitment to and able to demonstrate CPD including Management qualification/professional development.

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.