PCN Pharmacy Technician

Job description Job responsibilities Primary Duties and Responsibilities Undertake patient facing and patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with patients. Process prescriptions in line with agreed clinical protocols and within your competency. Where required, utilise consultation skills to work in partnership with patients to ensure they use their medicines effectively. When required, utilise consultation skills to work in partnership with patients to ensure they use their medicines effectively (e.g. checking inhaler technique) Support medication reviews and medicines reconciliation for new care home patients and synchronising medicines for patient transfers between care settings and linking with local community pharmacists. Provide specialist expertise, where competent, to address both the public health and social care needs of patients, including lifestyle advice, service information, and help in tackling local health inequalities. Take a central role in the clinical aspects of shared care protocols and liaising with specialist pharmacists for more complex patients. Support initiatives for antimicrobial stewardship to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. Assist in the delivery of medicines optimisation and management incentive schemes and patient safety audits. Support the implementation of national prescribing policies and guidance within GP practices, care homes and other primary care settings. This will be achieved through undertaking clinical audits (e.g. use of antibiotics), supporting quality improvement measures and contributing to the Quality and Outcomes Framework and enhanced services. Work with the multi-disciplinary team to ensure efficient medicines optimisation, including implementing efficient ordering and return processes, and reducing wastage. Support team in sorting and streaming general prescription requests, so as to allow GPs and clinical pharmacists to review the more clinically complex requests. Promote Electronic Repeat Dispensing (eRD) and online ordering as appropriate to patient and practice needs. Support efficient ordering to reduce medicines waste. Develop relationships with other pharmacy technicians, pharmacists and members of the multi-disciplinary team to support integration of the pharmacy team across health and social care including primary care, community pharmacy, secondary care, and mental health. Support service development, contributing to audits and practice-wide initiatives. Maintain accurate patient records that clearly and comprehensively reflect the content of each consultation, ensuring all information is documented in line with professional, legal, and organisational standards. Provide advice within professional remit to GPs and practice staff relating to changes to prescribing guidance to support the improvement of prescribing safety, quality, and cost effectiveness. Assist patients and GP staff with responses to medication queries. Counsel patients on how to use newly started medications, and provide advice regarding any medication changes, to optimise safety and improve compliance. Support implementation of local and national guidelines and formulary recommendations. Support and encourage reduction in prescribing of medicines available to purchase over the counter, medicines of low value, and low priority treatments.

Medicines Safety Identify patients that are overdue required monitoring and refer to the appropriate clinicians. Reconcile medicines following discharge from hospitals, intermediate care and into care homes, including identifying and appropriately rectifying unexplained changes and working with patients and community pharmacists to ensure patients receive the medicines they need post discharge. Ensure shared care protocols are in place where relevant and ensure the continuation of safe practice within primary care is maintained. Work with the pharmacy service team to develop and implement systems to ensure the effective and continuous supply of medication to high-risk patients. Understand and accurately record relevant patient alerts (e.g. visually impaired, hard of hearing). Ensure patient allergy information is accurate and correctly documented, and that the information is shared with the wider multidisciplinary team.

Clinical Governance Respond to Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) alerts, set up searches to identify affected patients on the practice clinical systems and action them according to practice protocol. Monitor practice prescribing against the local formulary and report back results to the clinical pharmacist team and action as required.Support in the reporting of medicines related incidents, and when required, contribute to investigations and root cause analysis.