PCN Pharmacy Technician inPlymouth inPlymouth PUBLISHED FRI 29 NOV 2024

We are looking for a Pharmacy Technician to cover maternity leave in early 2025. The vacancy will be within our PCN Prescribing Team within our PCN Hub.

Are you looking for a rewarding opportunity as a Pharmacy Technician?

Are you looking to work within a team environment with peer support and excellent training opportunities? If using your pharmaceutical skills and knowledge to support our patients and develop our services sound good to you, then we hope you'll read on to learn more about this opportunity. Mewstone PCN comprises of four practices in south-west Devon working together to deliver first class healthcare to our communities.

The pharmacy technician will support the role of the pharmacist to deliver the Clinical Pharmacy in General Practice model of care, including supporting and assisting our practices.

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 practices, 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 practices in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation, utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives and supporting prescribing workloads.

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• Identify patients requiring medication review and conduct appropriate medication review clinics or home visits if required by the organisation/practices and liaise with carers, Community Health teams or social care staff in order to optimise drug therapy, reduce polypharmacy and minimise unnecessary waste, communicating directly with patients as necessary.
• Provide medicines use advice and support to GP practice staff, practice registered patients, and the wider practice team such as community staff (district nurses, midwives, and physiotherapists) where appropriate.
• Help support the safe and effective operation of the prescribing system in the GP practice, including updating repeat medication regimes, issuing of appropriate acute prescriptions, flagging relevant laboratory testing and identifying patients due chronic disease reviews (e.g., annual asthma reviews)
• Support dispensary and pharmacy teams with clinical patient queries, electronic tasks and dispensing medication (when required)
• Deal with appropriate prescription queries presentations, such as medications not available due to stock shortages, synchronisation of repeat medications telephone queries from patients regarding their prescribed or over the counter medicines. Provide make every contact count public health education interventions to patients.
• Provide pharmaceutical support to PCN GP practices or care settings to enable them to develop, implement and monitor an agreed prescribing process plan which meets the objectives of the medicines management plan.
• Assist practices/ care settings in developing formularies, guidelines and policies to ensure the implementation of NICE guidelines, National Service Frameworks and the requirements of the medicines-related aspects of the GMS contract.
• Advise GPs, care staff and primary health care teams on risk management processes relating to the prescribing and monitoring of specialist drugs e.g., controlled drugs and those subject to shared care arrangements.
• Support practices to review specific areas of prescribing, specified by the line management or identified with the GP prescribing lead, including the interpretation of e-PACT data and the use of practice information to review prescribing and identify areas for action.
• Assist with the development and ongoing review of practice policy with regard to repeat prescribing systems and repeat dispensing to encourage the implementation of prescribing guidance and monitoring guidelines where appropriate.
• Liaise with Community Pharmacists to encourage them to reinforce changes made, encouraging them to identify savings which can be achieved with regard to generics, dose optimisations etc. and to assist in building their relationship with the practice.
• Answer medicine related queries from GPs, care settings, practice staff, PALS, social care staff and the general public in a timely and appropriate manner, escalating to and involving other relevant health care professionals within the practice in the absence of national guidance or agreed protocols where needed
• Provide advice and support to improve the disease registers within each practice to ensure all suitable patients are identified and offered suitable treatment and monitoring for their condition.
• Participate in multi-disciplinary meetings related to prescribing topics and to engage in the training of other healthcare professionals and practice staff on matters relating to medicines usage.
• Undertake clinical audits of prescribing in areas identified by yourself and agreed by the PCN or as directed by the PCN, feedback the results and implement changes in conjunction with the relevant practice team.
• Work innovatively with new technology to facilitate novel ways of working, which may include as part of a virtual hub within the network which provides support remotely to a number of practices, working alongside clinical pharmacists.
• Respond to MHRA and other patient safety alerts by searching for relevant populations included and implementing agreed patient safety measures in line with the practice prescribing lead.
• Undertake any other duties appropriate to the grade as allocated by line management.