Pharmacy Technician – General PracticeGP Practice

Job Overview

Salary: Competitive, depending on experience
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Full-time – £29,000 – £45,000
Location: Chineham Medical Practice, Basingstoke
Responsible to: Lead Clinical Pharmacist
Professional registration: GPhC registration as a Pharmacy Technician required

An opportunity to help build something new

We are looking for an enthusiastic, highly organised and forward-thinking Pharmacy Technician to join our practice pharmacy service at an exciting stage in its development.

Rather than simply joining an established pharmacy team and inheriting an existing way of working, you will have the opportunity to help shape how our pharmacy service develops from the outset.

We are building a new in-house model of pharmacy within general practice, with a strong emphasis on medicines safety, clinical pharmacy, efficient workflow design and the intelligent use of new technology.

We want our pharmacy team to work at the top of their professional scope. As the service develops, we will increasingly explore how technology, automation and improved clinical systems can remove unnecessary administrative work and allow our pharmacy team to focus its time where it adds the greatest clinical value.

For an experienced Pharmacy Technician, this represents an opportunity to bring your knowledge and ideas into a developing service and have a genuine influence over how it operates.

For a newly qualified or less experienced Pharmacy Technician with the right aptitude, this could equally be an excellent development opportunity, working closely alongside and supported by an experienced Clinical Pharmacist while developing a broad range of primary-care pharmacy skills.

Responsibilities:

Working closely with the Senior Clinical Pharmacist, GPs and the wider practice team, you will support the delivery and continued development of our in-house pharmacy service.

Your work will include, but will not necessarily be limited to:

Medicines safety and high-risk drug monitoring
Identifying patients requiring monitoring, reviewing whether appropriate investigations have been completed, coordinating recalls and follow-up, recognising outstanding monitoring requirements and escalating concerns appropriately.

Medication queries
Taking ownership of appropriate medication-related queries from patients, clinicians, community pharmacies and other healthcare professionals, resolving these independently where they fall within your competence and escalating appropriately when pharmacist or GP input is required.

Medicines reconciliation and clinical correspondence
Reviewing hospital discharge information and other incoming clinical correspondence, accurately reconciling medicines and identifying changes, discrepancies, monitoring requirements or additional actions arising from the communication.

This requires more than simply transferring information onto the clinical record: we are looking for someone able to recognise when a medication change has wider implications for the patient’s ongoing care.

Medication reviews
Undertaking appropriate medication reviews within agreed protocols and defined parameters, with support and clinical supervision from the Clinical Pharmacist.

You should be able to recognise when a seemingly straightforward review requires further clinical assessment and appropriately progress or escalate the patient.

Audits, searches and medicines optimisation
Supporting and undertaking medicines-safety searches, clinical audits, prescribing reviews and quality-improvement work, and helping ensure that identified actions are followed through to completion.

Monitoring and recalls
Recognising common medication monitoring requirements and supporting robust systems to ensure clinically necessary blood tests, observations and follow-up are completed.

Service development
Working alongside the Clinical Pharmacist to develop, test and improve pharmacy workflows, protocols and systems as the in-house pharmacy service expands.

We particularly welcome someone who is willing to question whether there is a better way of doing something and contribute ideas to designing that better system.

Technology and innovation
Supporting the development of technology-enabled pharmacy workflows and being willing to learn and work with new digital systems, automation and innovative ways of delivering medicines optimisation.

You do not need to be an IT expert. You do need to be curious, adaptable and comfortable learning new systems.

Experience:

• current registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) as a Pharmacy Technician;
• an appropriate recognised Pharmacy Technician qualification;
• excellent organisational and prioritisation skills;
• the ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams;
• good clinical reasoning within the Pharmacy Technician scope of practice;
• an understanding of medicines safety and the importance of appropriate monitoring;
• confidence working independently while recognising when escalation is required;
• good written and verbal communication skills;
• strong attention to detail;
• confidence using digital systems; and
• a commitment to continuing professional development.

we are looking for someone who is exceptionally organised, proactive and comfortable managing multiple workstreams simultaneously.

General practice pharmacy rarely involves completing one task before moving neatly onto the next. You may be coordinating high-risk drug monitoring, reviewing incoming hospital correspondence, managing medication queries, completing medicines reconciliation and progressing an audit or medicines-safety project alongside each other.

You will therefore need to be able to:

• organise and prioritise your own workload effectively;
• maintain oversight of several ongoing workstreams without losing track of actions or follow-up;
• recognise what is urgent, important or clinically significant;
• work independently within clearly defined professional boundaries;
• recognise the limits of your own competence and escalate appropriately;
• communicate confidently with patients, clinicians, community pharmacies and secondary-care teams;
• identify opportunities to improve systems rather than simply work around inefficient processes; and
• adapt to new technology and new ways of working.

Previous experience in general practice would be valuable, but we are equally interested in the right individual with the ability and enthusiasm to develop into the role.