Pharmacy Technician

NHS; Blackpool; On-site; GBP 23,000 - 30,000; Full time

Job summary

An exciting opportunity for a Pharmacy Technician to join Bloomfield Medical Centre under the Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network. You will play a crucial role in medicines optimisation, supporting patient care, and collaborating with professionals to enhance pharmaceutical services. The ideal candidate will possess a registration with GPhC and relevant diplomas, contributing to a diverse and dynamic healthcare environment serving over 17,000 patients across multiple sites.

Qualifications

• Experience as a primary care pharmacy technician or within a primary care medicines optimisation team.
• Knowledge of pharmacy law and ethics, and conducting clinical audits.
• Understanding of NHS directives affecting primary care and rational prescribing strategies.

Responsibilities

• Provide medicines optimisation advice to promote safe and effective medication use.
• Support patients directly with medication queries and education on medication use.
• Conduct clinical audits and participate in practice improvement meetings.

Skills

Medicines optimisation

Counselling patients

Communication

Education

BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Pharmaceutical Science

Current registration as a Pharmacy Technician

BTEC Level 4 in Pharmaceutical Science

Tools

EMIS Web

Docman

Eclipse

Job description

Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network Ltd has an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic Pharmacy Technician to join our team at Bloomfield Medical Centre.

Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network Ltd consists of the following practices:

• Bloomfield Medical Centre
• Waterloo Medical Centre

This post will be based and working at Bloomfield Medical Centre.

Bloomfield Medical Centre is a 8 Partner GP Practice Primary Care provider based over two sites in Blackpool, Bloomfield Medical Centre on Bloomfield Road and Grange Park Health Centre on Dinmore Avenue. Our services are diverse, forward-thinking enabling us to deliver care to meet local priorities in relation to deprivation, chronic disease, improved access, migration from secondary care and more efficient commissioning.

We provide high quality general medical care to a registered list of over 17,000 patients over the two sites, through our dedicated team of clinical, administrative and management professionals including 8 GP Partners, Salaried doctors, Clinical Pharmacists, Advanced Clinical Practitioners, Nurse Practitioners, Practice Nurses and Healthcare Assistants.

Main duties of the job

BloomfieldMedical Centre is a pioneer in utilising pharmacy expertise within the clinicalteam. Clinical pharmacists have been part of the practice since 2004 andcurrently we employ three. We also already employ a pharmacy technician.

The new GPcontract and Local Enhanced Services place additional responsibilities andrequirements on practices, notably around structured medication review,medicines safety and disease identification and management. We would like to expandour existing pharmacy technician capacity to help us deliver these prioritiesto our population.

The role willalso include a range of other responsibilities centred around ensuring we havesafe, effective and efficient systems for repeat prescribing, medicinesoptimisation, reducing medicines waste and maximising patient outcomes. Thisrole will include administrative aspects as well as direct patient contact,whether by telephone/video consultation, surgery appointments or on homevisits, supporting our multi-professional team. There will be regular contactand support to the rest of the clinical team and the prescription clerks andwider administration and reception teams.

About us

Blackpool South Central Primary Care Network Ltd consists of the following practices:

• Bloomfield Medical Centre
• Waterloo Medical Centre

Bloomfield Medical Centre is a 8 Partner GP Practice Primary Care provider based over two sites in Blackpool, Bloomfield Medical Centre on Bloomfield Road and Grange Park Health Centre on Dinmore Avenue. Our services are diverse, forward-thinking enabling us to deliver care to meet local priorities in relation to deprivation, chronic disease, improved access, migration from secondary care and more efficient commissioning.

We provide high quality general medical care to a registered list of over 17,000 patients over the two sites, through our dedicated team of clinical, administrative and management professionals including 8 GP Partners, Salaried doctors, Clinical Pharmacists, Advanced Clinical Practitioners, Nurse Practitioners, Practice Nurses and Healthcare Assistants.

Waterloo Medical Centre is well established in the community and has a patient population of over 12000 patients. The practice consists of 5 GP Partners, 1 Salaried GP, 3 Practice Nurses, 1 HCA, 1 Nursing Associate, 1 Physiotherapist, 2 Pharmacists, 1 Pharmacy Technician and 12 Admin/Reception staff. We are a busy friendly forward thinking practice. Waterloo Medical Centre is a training practice that has 2 GP Registrars.

Job responsibilities

Responsibilities:

Provide medicines optimisation advice to theteam to promote the safe, effective, quality and cost-effective use ofmedicines.

To reconcile medicines for newly registeredpatients and following hospital discharge or outpatient consultation. Work withpatients/carers and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive themedicines intended.

Support patients directly with their medicines,e.g. counselling on purpose and correct use, advising on inhaler technique ortopical product application, education on how to order repeat prescriptions,resolving adherence problems.

Referring patients to other members of the teamwhere an identified need arises.

Carry out housekeeping whilst in patientrecords e.g. dose optimisation and medicines synchronisation.

Support repeat prescribing systems and processesin practice with a focus on quality improvement and supporting safeprescribing.

Support the team by helping with queriesrelating to prescription requests and look for ways to improve the efficiencyand safety of the prescription issuing process, ensuring queries are resolvedand scripts issued in line with the practice process.

Deal with patient medication queries e.g. doseschedule, side effects, adverse effects and out of stocks, swallowingdifficulties, urgent requests.

Manage acute requests for medications withinscope of practice

Resolve queries with prescriptions and issuecertain medication where appropriate in line with practice protocols.

Participate in practice clinical meetings,patient participation groups, and other meetings to improve engagement of therole of pharmacy technician and promote issues relevant to prescribing andmedicines optimisation.

Help implement electronic prescribing and repeatdispensing in appropriate patients including working with community pharmacystaff to identify appropriate patients.

Undertake clinical audit and analyse prescribingdata to increase our understanding of medicines use and identify areas forimprovement.

Review data, reports and dashboards to identifyareas for action.

Utilise clinical alert systems, e.g. Eclipse,and action any patients flagged up for review.

Assist the practice in achieving goals/targetsset within service specifications, contracts, protocols or guidelines.

Review medicines safety alerts and other alertsdistributed on the cascade system, recommend and implement necessary actionsarising from these.

Assist with managing the formulary to improvethe quality, safety and cost effectiveness of prescribing and to reflect localprescribing policy.

Provide medicines related training to staff.

Provide back-fill support to the prescriptionclerks during periods of leave or other absence, in order to maintain aneffective repeat prescription service, as necessary.

Must have completed or be enrolled in, beundertaking or be prepared to start an approved 18-month training pathway (e.g.Primary care pharmacy educational pathway (PCPEP)). Pharmacy technicians mustbe registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council. Entry to the PCPEPprogramme will include the option for an accreditation of Prior Learning (APEL)process.

The post holder is required to travelindependently between work sites and to attend meetings, etc, hosted by otheragencies.

This job description is not meant to be exhaustive. Itdescribes the main duties and responsibilities of the post. The candidate wouldbe expected to undertake any other duties commensurate with the role as agreedwith the practice.

Person Specification

Experience

• Up to date therapeutic knowledge and practical knowledge of
• medicines optimisation principles and evidence-based medicine.
• Relevant knowledge of pharmacy law and ethics.
• Experience of change management and putting ideas into practice.
• Experience of completing clinical audits.
• Experience as a primary care pharmacy technician or part of a
• primary care medicines optimisation team.
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts
• of rational prescribing and strategies for the improvement of
• prescribing.
• Experience of analysing prescribing data.
• Knowledge of EMIS Web clinical system, Docman, and Eclipse.
• Understanding of the NHS agenda and the issues affecting primary
• Awareness of systems to support management of patients in a
• primary care setting, delivering pharmaceutical input and support
• in the context of pathways of care and the business of the practice.

Qualifications

• BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Pharmaceutical Science or NVQ Level 3 Diploma in Pharmacy service skills or equivalent with underpinning knowledge.
• Current registration as a Pharmacy Technician with the General Pharmaceutical Council.
• BTEC Level 4 in Pharmaceutical Science

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 (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.