Job description

Job responsibilities

Pharmacy Technician - Job Description

Responsible to: This role is directly employed by the North West Leicestershire GP Federation and the post holder will work for the North West Leicestershire PCN.

Job Summary

The post holder is a Pharmacy Technician, who acts within their professional boundaries, supporting and working alongside a team of pharmacists and technicians in General Practice. In this role they will be supported by a Senior Pharmacy Technician who will develop, manage and mentor them.

The post holder will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient facing role. 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. You will help patients to get the best from their medicines by switching medications to agreed and approved protocols, improving repeat prescribing processes in general practices, including promotion of repeat dispensing and online ordering, minimising clinical risk and aiming to reduce wasted medicines.

The post holder will provide support to general practice staff with regards to prescription and medication queries. They will carry out medicines switches in GP practices in line with practice and ICB agreed specific protocols, reviewing and amending patient records and informing patients.

They will help support the repeat prescriptions system, promoting electronic repeat dispensing and online ordering. They will carry out housekeeping whilst in patient records e.g., dose optimisation and medicines synchronisation.

The post holder will be the first port of call to answer and deal with any medicines related queries from administration and reception staff, as well as any dispensary staff. The aim of this is to improve the quality of care for our patients and operational efficiencies within the PCN, so requires motivation and passion to deliver excellent service within General Practice.

Please see attached for full job description.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Understanding of prescribing and medicines management issues.
• Good clinical pharmaceutical knowledge including terminology.
• An appreciation of the nature of primary care prescribing, concepts of rational prescribing and strategies to improve.
• Good interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills.
• Good communication skills, verbal and written, with ability to adjust communication style and content to suit the audience.
• Able to work under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Ability to work in a busy environment and prioritise tasks effectively whilst also supporting others.
• Ability to accept guidance and constructive criticism.
• Works effectively independently and as part of a team.
• Demonstrates attention to detail, able to work accurately, identify errors quickly and easily.

Desirable

• Relevant theoretical and practical knowledge of Primary Care Networks, General Practice and evidence-based medicine.
• Awareness of systems to support the management of patients in a primary care setting, delivering pharmaceutical input and support the context of pathways of care.
• Awareness of GP budgets and funding systems.
• Knowledge and understanding of pharmacy law and ethics and current legislation.
• Able to analyse and interpret prescribing data.

Qualifications

Essential

• Registration with General Pharmaceutical Council as a Pharmacy Technician
• BTEC/NVQ3 Pharmacy Services (or equivalent)
• Evidence of commitment to continuing professional development.
• Experience working as a qualified, registered pharmacy technician.

Desirable

• Experience of working within primary care.
• Completion of PCPEP or equivalent

Other

Essential

• Demonstrates ability to self-motivate and use own initiative to achieve goals.
• Adaptable and flexible
• Able to maintain confidentiality
• Willing and able to travel throughout the twelve practices within the PCN, as required (therefore, require a UK driving Licence and access to a vehicle)
• In date DBS check
• Good computer literacy
• Safeguarding Training
• Knowledge of GP systems (e.g. EMIS Web and Systm1)
• Immunisation status
• Basic life support

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

North West Leicestershire GP Federation

Address

Castle Donington Surgery

53 Borough Street

Castle Donington

DE74 2LB

United Kingdom

Employer's website

http://www.nwleicestershiregpfed.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job summary:

The post-holder will manage a caseload and deal with a wide range of health needs in a primary care setting, ensuring the highest standards of care for all registered and temporary patients.

Clinical responsibilities:

• In accordance with the practice timetable, as agreed, the post-holder will make themselves available to undertake a variety of duties, including surgery consultations, telephone consultations and queries, visiting patients at home, checking and signing repeat prescriptions and dealing with queries, paperwork and correspondence in a timely fashion
• Making professional, autonomous decisions in relation to presenting problems, whether self-referred or referred from other health care workers within the organisation
• Assessing the health care needs of patients with undifferentiated and undiagnosed problems
• Screening patients for disease risk factors and early signs of illness
• Developing care plans for health in consultation with patients and in line with current practice disease management protocols
• Providing counselling and health education
• Admitting patients to hospital and referring to other care providers as appropriate
• Recording clear and contemporaneous consultation notes to agreed standards
• Collecting data for audit purposes
• Compiling and issuing computer-generated acute and repeat prescriptions (avoiding hand-written prescriptions whenever possible)
• Prescribing in accordance with the practice prescribing formulary (or generically) whenever this is clinically appropriate
• In general, the post-holder will be expected to undertake all the normal duties and responsibilities associated with a GP working within primary care.

Other responsibilities within the organisation:

• Awareness of and compliance with all relevant practice policies/guidelines, e.g. prescribing, confidentiality, data protection, health and safety
• A commitment to life-long learning and audit to ensure evidence-based best practice
• Contributing to evaluation/audit and clinical standard setting within the organisation
• Contributing to the development of computer-based patient records
• Contributing to the summarising of patient records and read-coding patient data
• Attending training and events organised by the practice or other agencies, where appropriate.

Confidentiality:

• In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health and other matters. They do so in confidence and have the right to expect that staff will respect their privacy and act appropriately.
• In the performance of the duties outlined in this job description, the post-holder may have access to confidential information relating to patients and their carers, practice staff and other healthcare workers. They may also have access to information relating to the practice as a business organisation. All such information from any source is to be regarded as strictly confidential.
• Information relating to patients, carers, colleagues, other healthcare workers or the business of the practice may only be divulged to authorised persons in accordance with the practice policies and procedures relating to confidentiality and the protection of personal and sensitive data.

Health & safety:

The post-holder will follow health and safety and infection control procedures as defined in the practice health & safety policy, the practice health & safety manual, and the practice infection control policy and published procedures. This will include (but will not be limited to):

• Using personal security systems within the workplace according to practice guidelines
• Awareness of national standards of infection control and cleanliness and regulatory / contractual / professional requirements, and good practice guidelines
• Correct personal use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• Management of the full range of infection control procedures in both routine and extraordinary circumstances (e.g. pandemic or individual infectious circumstances)
• Hand hygiene standards
• Managing directly all incidents of accidental exposure
• Active observation of current working practices across the practice in relation to infection control, cleanliness and related activities, ensuring that procedures are followed and weaknesses/training needs are identified, escalating issues as appropriate to the responsible person
• Identifying the risks involved in work activities and undertaking such activities in a way that manages those risks across clinical and patient process
• Making effective use of training to update knowledge and skills across the full range of infection control and patient processes
• Monitoring practice facilities and equipment in relation to infection control, ensuring that proper use is made of hand-cleansing facilities, wipes etc., and that these are sufficient to ensure a good clinical working environment. Lack of facilities to be escalated as appropriate to the responsible manager
• Safe management of sharps use, storage and disposal
• Maintenance of own clean working environment
• Using appropriate infection control procedures, maintaining work areas in a tidy, clean and sterile and safe way, free from hazards. Initiation of remedial / corrective action where needed or escalation to responsible management
• Actively identifying, reporting, and correcting health and safety hazards and infection hazards immediately when recognised
• Keeping own work areas and general/patient areas generally clean, sterile, identifying issues and hazards/risks in relation to other work areas within the business, and assuming responsibility in the maintenance of general standards of cleanliness across the business in consultation (where appropriate) with responsible managers
• Undertaking periodic infection control training
• Correct waste and instrument management, including handling, segregation, and container use
• Maintenance of sterile environments
• Demonstrate due regard for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

Equality and diversity:

The post-holder will support the equality, diversity and rights of patients, carers and colleagues, to include:

• Acting in a way that recognises the importance of peoples rights, interpreting them in a way that is consistent with practice procedures and policies, and current legislation
• Respecting the privacy, dignity, needs and beliefs of patients, carers and colleagues
• Behaving in a manner which is welcoming to and of the individual, is non-judgmental and respects their circumstances, feelings priorities and rights.

Personal/professional development:

In addition to maintaining continued education through attendance at any courses and/or study days necessary to ensure that professional development requirements are met, the post-holder will participate in any training programme implemented by the practice as part of this employment, with such training to include:

• Participation in an annual individual performance review, including taking responsibility for maintaining a record of own personal and/or professional development
• Taking responsibility for own development, learning and performance and demonstrating skills and activities to others who are undertaking similar work.

Quality:

The post-holder will strive to maintain quality within the practice, and will:

• Alert other team members to issues of quality and risk
• Assess own performance and take accountability for own actions, either directly or under supervision
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the team by reflecting on own and team activities and making suggestions on ways to improve and enhance the teams performance
• Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patients needs
• Effectively manage own time, workload and resources.

Communication:

The post-holder should recognize the importance of effective communication within the team and will strive to:

• Communicate effectively with other team members
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers
• Recognise peoples needs for alternative methods of communication and respond accordingly.

Contribution to the implementation of services

The post-holder will:

• Apply practice policies, standards and guidance
• Discuss with other members of the team how the policies, standards and guidelines will affect own work
• Participate in audit where appropriate.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Qualified GP
• MRCGP
• Vocational Training Certificate or equivalent JCPTGP
• General Practitioner (Certificate of Completion of Training CCT)
• Full GMC registration
• National Performers List registration
• Appropriate defence indemnity (MPS/MDU)
• Eligibility to practice in the UK independently
• Experience of working in a primary care environment
• Experience of continued professional development
• Experience of QOF and clinical audit
• General understanding of the GMS contract
• Outstanding level of clinical knowledge and skills commensurate with that of a GP
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral)
• Strong IT skills
• Clear, polite telephone manner
• Competent in the use of Office and Outlook
• EMIS/SystmOne/Vision user skills
• Effective time management (planning and organising)
• Ability to work as a team member and autonomously
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Problem solving and analytical skills
• Ability to follow clinical policy and procedure
• Experience with audit and able to lead audit programmes
• Experience with clinical risk management
• Polite and confident
• Flexible and cooperative
• Motivated, forward thinker
• Problem solver with the ability to process information accurately and effectively, interpreting data as required
• High levels of integrity and loyalty
• Sensitive and empathetic in distressing situations
• Ability to work under pressure/in stressful situations
• Effectively able to communicate and understand the needs of the patient
• Commitment to ongoing professional development
• Effectively utilise resources
• Punctual and committed to supporting the team effort
• Flexibility to work outside of core office hours
• Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) check
• Occupational Health clearance

Desirable

• Minimum of two years as a salaried GP
• Experience of medicines management
• Experience of ICB initiatives
• Likes Cake

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

Castle Donington Surgery

Address

53 Borough Street

Castle Donington

Derby

DE74 2LB

United Kingdom

Employer's website

https://www.castledoningtonsurgery.co.uk (Opens in a new tab)