BACKGROUND

Healthcare Central London (HCL) is the GP Federation covering the Central London borough area. The organisation supports 33 General Practices and 4 Primary Care Networks (PCNs). We operate a number of NHS contracts including a Care Navigation Service, a Clinical Pharmacy Service, a Community Dermatology Service, and Partnership in Practice (PiP) – an out-of-hospitals provision which is sub-contracted to its 33 General Practice members.

Our vision is to be recognised as a leading GP provider network, run by clinicians for the benefit of our local population. We will achieve this by working with patients and partners to ensure that general practice remains sustainable and independent.

Our approach is to deliver exceptional assistance to our 33 General Practice members and to operate our NHS contracts in a manner that supports our Practices and their patients by providing services economically, locally, promptly, and in a familiar environment.

Now in our 16th year we look forward to our continued growth and to contributing a voice for General Practice in the planned Integrated Care System (ICS).

JOB ROLE

The Pharmacy Technician will support the medicine management role of the Clinical Pharmacy team to deliver a safe, efficient and consistently effective General Practice model of care, including supporting and assisting a cluster of GP 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 GP Federation in achieving national requirements, NICE implementation and utilisation of medicines optimisation initiatives. We offer a supportive environment, our Clinical Pharmacist Team work closely together to improve patient care and experience.

KEY TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support the role of the Clinical Pharmacist at PCN level on the delivery of medicines management in the general practice model

· Delivering pharmacy related aspects of the Network DES such as medicines optimisation aspects of the Investment and Impact

• Carry out medicines switches in GP practices in line with practice and CCG 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

• Improve prescribing processes in general practice

• Promotion of electronic repeat dispensing and online ordering

• Report on key performance indicators for CPGP to demonstrate added value for patients and general practice in accordance with NICE guidance

• 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 and the Senior Clinical Pharmacists

• Participate in practice meetings, patient participation groups, and other meetings to improve engagement of the role of pharmacy technician within the CPGP model and to promote issues relevant to prescribing and medicines optimisation

• Liaise with other pharmacy stakeholders e.g. ICB Pharmacy team, community pharmacy, and hospital pharmacy teams.

• Support Medicines Optimisation and the delivery of the Medicines Optimisation strategy

• 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 SystmOne, the GP practice clinical systems to conduct prescribing audits

• To undertake, participate and share the outcomes of clinical audits to facilitate improvement and changes in practice

• As instructed by the ICB Pharmacist, 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 to 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

· To carry out pertinent tasks associated with COVID-19 vaccine management such as ordering vaccine and record keeping as appropriate.

• Develop a culture that promotes equality and values diversity. The post holder must be aware of and committed to the Equality and Diversity policies of the organisation and comply with all the requirements of these policies and actively promote Equality and Diversity issues relevant to the post.

• Ensure the principles of openness, transparency and candour are observed and upheld in all working practices.

• The post holder will have, or acquire through training provided by the organisation, the appropriate level of safeguarding and knowledge, skills and practice required for the post and be aware of and comply with the organisation’s safeguarding protection policies and procedures.

• Ensure that any infection prevention and control issues are reported to the line manager/Infection Prevention and Control The above list of job duties is not exclusive or exhaustive and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS

The post holder will be required to:

Maintain constructive relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders, including: General Practice, Clinical Pharmacy Team, Central London borough division of North West London ICB, participate in relevant internal and external working groups/projects, services, and initiatives which develop the role and the service within Central London.

Requirements

Registration

· Mandatory registration with General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

Education / Training / Qualifications

· GPhC-accredited course, GPhC-recognised qualifications or a GPhC approved apprenticeship pathways.

Knowledge and Experience

Recent previous experience within comparable role in General Practice

Previous experience working within a patient facing role

Experience of prescribing/clinical systems such as SystmOne

Skills / Abilities

· Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written Good IT skills

· Good organisational skills

· Ability to work under pressure in a busy environment

· Ability to work as part of a team

· Able to plan, manage, monitor, advise and review general pharmaceutical care programmes for patients across core areas, including disease states/long term conditions.

· Uses skills in a range of routine situations requiring analysis or comparison of a range of options.

· Recognises priorities when problem-solving and identifies deviations from normal pattern and is able to refer to pharmacists/ senior pharmacists or GPs when appropriate.

Other Jobs You May Be Interested In

· Able to follow legal, ethical, professional and organisational policies/procedures and codes of conduct

· Involves patients in decisions about prescribed medicines and supporting adherence as per NICE guidelines.

· Demonstrate understanding of the pharmacy role in governance and is able to implement this appropriately within the workplace.

· Demonstrate understanding of, and contributes to, the workplace vision

· Engages with Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) and involves PPGs in development of the role and practices.

· Demonstrates ability to improve quality within limitations of service

· Reviews yearly progress and develops clear plans to achieve results within priorities set by others.

· Demonstrate ability to motivate self to achieve goals

· Promotes diversity and equality in people management techniques and leads by example

· Demonstrate understanding of the implications of national and local priorities for the team and/or service and manage the team through these changes

· Demonstrate understanding of the process for effective resource utilisation

· Demonstrate understanding of, and conforms to, relevant standards of practice

· Demonstrates ability to identify and resolve risk management issues according to policy/protocol

· Follows professional and organisational policies/procedures relating to performance management

Interpersonal Skills

• Excellent interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills

•Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Demonstrates the ability to communicate complex and sensitive information in an understandable form to a variety of audiences (e.g. patients)

· Demonstrates use of appropriate communication to gain the co-operation of relevant stakeholders (including patients, senior and peer colleagues, and other professionals, other NHS/private organisations e.g. ICBs)