Job Description
Job Profile
PCN Pharmacy Technician
Hadwen & Quedgeley Primary Care Network
Location of Work:
Quedgeley Medical Centre - Olympus Park, Quedgeley, Gloucester, GL2 4NF
Reports to:
Clinical Pharmacist
Hours of Work:
Part time or full time – min. 25hrs per week, max. 37.5hrs per week
Working Pattern:
Monday to Friday
Salary:
Competitive and negotiable depending on experience
Holiday:
5 weeks plus bank holidays (pro rata)
Other:
NHS Pension Scheme
Job Overview
The Hadwen & Quedgeley Primary Care Network (HQ PCN) is looking expand its clinical pharmacy team by recruiting a pharmacy technician to work at Quedgeley Medical Centre on a part-time or full-time basis.
We are looking for an individual who is passionate in delivering high quality service to patients. The successful candidate will support the practice-based Clinical Pharmacist and GPs to ensure the delivery of safe, effective, and efficient systems for repeat prescribing, medicines optimisation, reducing medicines waste and maximising patient outcomes. This role will proactively manage medicines optimisation to improve patients care, safety and support clinical staff to spend more time on clinical care.
The Pharmacy Technician will support the medicine management role of Clinical Pharmacists and GPs to deliver a safe, efficient, and consistently effective General Practice model of care. The purpose of the role is to lead improvements to maximise safe, cost-effective best practice in prescribing to improve the quality of patient care.
About Us
HQ PCN is made up of two general practice surgeries situated just 4 miles apart in Gloucester:
- Quedgeley Medical Centre - a family run practice located in Quedgeley with approx. 6,500 patients
- Hadwen Health - a nine-partner practice located in Abbeydale with approx. 18,000 patients
With just 6,500 patients, QMC is a small practice with a relatively small team comprised of doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, administrative/secretarial staff, pharmacists, and others. The small, tight-knit team has a wonderful dynamic of mucking in and supporting one another, sharing responsibilities, and being confident and enabled to speak up and ask for help.
The wider PCN team includes Care Coordinators, Social Prescribers, Physiotherapists, and Mental Health Practitioners, and is overseen by a GP Clinical Director and Business Manager. The PCN strives bring the two practices together to share resources, learning and best practice, whilst offering opportunity for practitioners to work with a wide demographic of patients and to see a broad range of conditions and health inequalities.
The PCN strives to improve the health and wellbeing of people within the Gloucester area. We are looking for forward thinking, creative and passionate practitioners to join us in achieving our ambitions and vision.
Person Specification
Qualifications
- Professional registration with GPhC BTEC/NVQ level 3 or equivalent in pharmaceutical sciences
- Evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development
- Experience of working as a qualified, registered pharmacy technician in primary care, community, or hospital pharmacy
Experience
- Understanding of the current national policies those impacting on medicines optimisation services
- Good clinical pharmacy knowledge including terminology
- Knowledge and understanding of pharmacy law and ethics and current legislation
- Experience of decision making and delivery in a changing environment
- Experience of working with a diverse range of stakeholders
Knowledge & Skills
- Ability to adapt to and embrace change across own service and wider MDTs
- Ability to integrate latest evidence-based practice into services
- Ability to evidence a sound understanding of the NHS principles and values
- Ability to understand and analyse complex issues and balance competing priorities in order to make difficult decisions
- Ability to analyse and interpret complex, often incomplete information, pre-empt and evaluate issues, and recommend an appropriate course of action to address the issues
- Excellent interpersonal, organisational and communication skills
Personal Attributes
- Ability to coordinate and prioritise workloads
- Ability to multi-task and be self-disciplined and highly motivated
- Demonstrate a flexible approach in order to ensure patient care is delivered
- High degree of personal credibility, emotional intelligence, patience and flexibility
- Ability to cope with unpredictable situations
- Confident in facilitating and challenging others
Key Responsibilities and Duties
Scope of the Role
- Support the clinical pharmacist and GPs
- Improve patient and carer understanding of, confidence in, and compliance with their medicines
- Support the clinical pharmacist with medicines and prescribing queries from patients and staff
- Support the clinical pharmacist to improve the safety and quality of prescribing following hospital admissions and attendance.
- Carry out medicine switches in GP practices in line with practice and ICB agreed specific protocols – reviewing patients’ records, amending records, and informing patients
- Carry out housekeeping whilst in patient records, e.g., dose optimisation and medicines synchronisation
- Support improving prescribing processes in general practice
- Promotion of electronic repeat dispensing and online ordering
- Use and maintain information systems and databases relevant to the position including incident reporting, medicines optimisation, prescribing data, cost savings and patient outcomes
- Work closely with GP practices within the PCN.
- Participate in practice meetings, patient participation groups, and other meetings to improve engagement of the role of pharmacy technician within the PCN model and to promote issues relevant to prescribing and medicines optimization.
- Liaise with other pharmacy stakeholders e.g., ICB Medicines Optimisation team, community pharmacy, and hospital pharmacy teams
- 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 be responsible for the organisation, planning and of own workload to meet set deadlines
- To utilise GP practice clinical systems to conduct prescribing audits e.g., SystmOne
- To undertake, participate and share the outcomes of clinical audits to facilitate improvement and changes in practice
- Ensure that all major MHRA drug alerts, where appropriate and within level of competence, are acted upon within practices over an appropriate time frame and advise on any medication changes that occur as a result
- To assist in the monitoring of prescribing expenditure at individual practice level and propose changes to ensure containment within identified resource
- To undertake learning and development to ensure 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
- Contribute to the achievement and maintenance of good to outstanding CQC registration status
Patient Services
- To provide medication review services to patients via clinics in the practice, domiciliary visits and in residential and nursing homes, and to deliver pharmaceutical care plans that maximise cost-effective prescribing and improve the quality of patient care
- To complete effective medicines reconciliation at transfer of care and identify any changes required
- To present at patient group meetings or other events to give advice on the appropriate use of medicines
- Assist the PCN practices with the appropriate monitoring and management of their prescribing budgets
- To help plan, develop and support the introduction of new working processes within the practice to optimise the quality of prescribing
- To support the provision of targeted support and proactive review for vulnerable, complex patients and those at risk of admission and re admission to secondary care
- To support with the resolution of medication queries from patients and their carers
- To promote self-management and develop patients support systems
- To support with the management of therapeutic drug monitoring system and recall of patients taking high risk drugs i.e., anticoagulants anticonvulsants and DMARDs etc.
Medicines Optimisation Systems
- Support the PCN and overseeing of repeat prescribing, repeat dispensing, electronic prescribing, and medication review systems
- Handle prescription queries and requests directly
- Support the systems for reconciliation of medicines from outpatient and discharge letter and support safe transfer of care through liaison with hospital and community colleagues
- Liaise with other stakeholders in the supply chain such as community pharmacist and appliance contractors to handle queries and manage supply problems
- Support the clinical pharmacist with the mapping of complex whole systems pathways and process
- Maintain and review a Medicines Handling Policy for the PCN to ensure safe processes for self-administered medicines and controlled drugs
- Support delivery of QOF, incentive schemes, QIPP and other quality of cost effectiveness initiatives
Safety
- Identify missing information, discrepancies, and errors on repeat prescription requests and resolve them according to local policies and procedures
- Report medicines related incidents, contribute to investigations and root cause analyses
- Participate in serious incident investigations and multidisciplinary care reviews
- Report Adverse Drug Reactions and promote reporting by MDT
- Monitoring high-risk medicines according to local systems and processes
- Helping to ensure effective antimicrobial stewardship
- Oversee use and monitoring of high-risk drugs and drugs of abuse
- Action and response to Drug Safety Alerts and other safety cascades
Training and Education Information
- Participate in MDT learning activities
- Provide ad-hoc medicines advice to doctors and other clinicians
- Horizon scan for new drugs and provide information to the MDT on their introduction
- Provide advice on cost effective prescribing and supply issues
- Actively participate in monthly PCNs pharmacist and pharmacy technician group clinical supervision and development sessions
Quality
- Contribute to the achievement of KPIs and objectives, monitor against overall objectives of the role
- Inspire innovation amongst the team and stimulate improvement activities
- Ensure compliance with CQC and other Professional standards
- Promote a culture of constant improvement and excellence
- Conduct regular clinical audits and other improvement activities
- Involvement in national and local Quality, Innovation Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) projects
- Assess own performance regularly and make suggestions of how to improve personal and team performance
- Understand a risk management approach and apply it to all activities
- Implement policies and effective processes for medicines governance including controlled drugs
- Implement policies and effective processes for repeat prescribing and repeat dispensing
- Ensure allergy information is accurate and correctly documented, and that the information is shared with the wider multidisciplinary team including community pharmacy
Financial and Physical Resources
- Support staff management and performance review
- Support prescribing leads and Clinical Pharmacist monitor expenditure and drug budget
- Support cost effective prescribing
- Reduce waste
- Ensure and safe storage and security of medicines
Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Permanent
Part-time hours: 25-37.5 per week
Salary: £24,000.00-£29,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
- Employee discount
- Free flu jabs
- Free parking
- On-site parking
- Work from home
Schedule:
- Day shift
- Monday to Friday
- No weekends
Work Location: In person
Application deadline: 21/05/2023
Reference ID: A2812-PhTech-0423