Pharmacy Technician

Job summary

Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice is part of an exciting programme of transformation to develop a new model of care which addresses our ambition to deliver person-centred, coordinated care across the district. The Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice model is supported by the direction of national policy including the Five Year Forward View and GP Forward View where there is a need to better utilise the role of pharmacy within primary care to pro-actively help patients stay safe and well and out of hospital as well as helping to reduce the demands on general practice.

Pharmacy technicians play an important role, complementing clinical pharmacists, community pharmacists and other members of the PCN multi-disciplinary team. Pharmacy technicians are different to clinical pharmacists as they are not able to prescribe or make clinical decisions, instead working under supervision to ensure effective and efficient use of medicines. Pharmacy technicians core role responsibilities will cover clinical, and technical and administrative categories.

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. The post holder will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in General Practice, including promotion of repeat dispensing and online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.

In addition, the post holder will be responsible for encouraging the development of better understanding of the principles of medicines optimisation throughout the practice teams and promoting good practice in line with therapeutic developments. This will involve assisting the PCN in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives. Carry out medicines optimisation tasks including effective medicine administration (e.g. checking inhaler technique), supporting medication reviews and medicines reconciliation.

Where required, utilise consultation skills to work in partnership with patients to ensure they use their medicines effectively. As determined by the PCN, support medication reviews and medicines reconciliation for new care home patients and synchronising medicines for patient transfers between care settings, linking with local community pharmacies.

Penwith PCN has around 67,000 registered practice population, in the far West of the country and is a large, forward-thinking, well-integrated network of7 GP practices. Our geography includes some remote rural locations as well as towns, surrounded on 3 sides by the coast. This role may be working mainly from one practice, but the successful applicant may be required to change location as per the business's needs.

We are looking to recruit a Pharmacy Technician to work with GP practices in and around Penzance, as part of Penwith Primary Care Network (PCN) in West Cornwall. The location listed is the business address, and not necessarily the work location. Additionally, this is a practice-based role, not remote, with technicians working day-to-day alongside GPs, nurses and the wider multidisciplinary team.

We will consider part-time to full-time hours, and you will have the opportunity to be responsible for your own GP practice, allowing you to build strong relationships with patients and practice staff while being supported by the wider PCN pharmacy team. This role is ideal for a Pharmacy Technician who enjoys patient-facing work, values continuity within a practice team, and wants to contribute to a one team culture-focused on personalised…