Pharmacy Technician Specialist Patient Safety

Job overview

We are recruiting for a Pharmacy Technician Specialist Patient Safety who shares our vision to be trusted to provide consistently outstanding care and exemplary service to our patients.

Are you an experienced Pharmacy Technician seeking a new challenge? Do you enjoy making a positive difference to patient care?

The Lister Hospital, Stevenage is looking for a high calibre pharmacy technician to join our expanding team. Being driven and adaptable are essential characteristics for this role as this is a unique opportunity to shape the future.

The role will expose you to working with lead nurses, doctors, and patient safety experts; you will develop close working relationships with Quality Improvement and Kaizen teams as well. Your input will be key to making changes to improve patient safety.

Continued professional development is actively supported in the pharmacy department and there will be opportunities to undertake training where applicable.

The successful candidate will also be supported to develop their leadership and management skills. If this sounds like the opportunity for you, please get in touch with us

Our Values are Include, Respect and Improve. It is important that you understand and refer to our values during your recruitment process and beyond

Main duties of the job

The Pharmacy Technician Specialist will work with the Principal Pharmacist for Patient Safety on the medicines and patient safety matters.

Coordinate, supervise, deliver and contribute to the medicine’s safety audit programme and medicines safety KPIs.

To participate in Trust and ICB medicines and patient safety walk arounds.

To deliver and contribute to the education and training strategy for Trust wide staff in relation to medicines safety.

Help co-ordinate and minute departmental and Trust wide meetings including Medication Safety Forum.

To collect data to support the investigation of medication errors and implement changes to minimise risk both within pharmacy and in the community.

To develop innovative and forward-thinking quality improvement projects to improve medicines safety and quality outcomes for our patients.

Analysis monthly incident reports for divisions, specialities, and pharmacy
To co-ordinate and develop Trust wide communication methods for medicines safety e.g. Presentations and writing the Medicines Safety Bulletin.

To line manage relevant staff.

Implement policies, propose changes to working practices and procedures.

To support the Medicines Management team with clinical work at ward level.

Working for our organisation

At East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, we are proud of the range of general & specialist services we provide & our 6,000 or so dedicated staff ensure our patients get the best care. Our ability to be flexible & innovative in the way in which we work and deliver our services to our catchment has never been more important than it is now.

We run the following hospitals:

• The Lister Hospital, Stevenage
• New Queen Elizabeth II (New QEII), Welwyn Garden City
• Hertford County, Hertford
• Mount Vernon Cancer Centre (MVCC), Northwood

We have ambitious plans to become an outstanding, patient-led Trust where dedicated staff provide high-quality, compassionate care to our patients. We continue to undergo significant transformation; our staff & patients are at the heart of delivering this ambitious agenda.

We understand that finding and starting a new job is an important life decision. If you need reasonable adjustments for a disability, or a life event, such as menopause - so that we can consider your application fairly & to get the best out of you during the selection process, please let us know.

We are committed to a positive work life balance for our employees. Employees are entitled to seek to work flexible working patterns & we are committed to listen and consider all requests. Such requests, of course, have to be made & considered formally, & will need to be balanced against service needs, but our starting point will always be to find ways to support making them happen.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification applicant pack for further detailed information regarding this role.

Person specificationQualifications / TrainingEssential criteria

• NVQ Level 3 in Pharmacy Services or equivalent and BTEC in Pharmaceutical science or equivalent
• Registered with GPhC as a technician
• Accredited Checking Pharmacy Technician (ACPT)
• Current, relevant knowledge of hospital pharmacy procedures acquired though training, experience and knowledge
• Certificate in Medicines Management
• Leadership Course

Previous ExperienceEssential criteria

• Post qualification ward based hospital experience
• Ability to work within clearly defined occupational polices and standard operating procedures (SOPs)
• Experience of medication counselling and has had regular contact with patients
• Experience in developing and implementing SOPs
• Proven ability to manage own workload and theworkload of others, delegating supervision activities as appropriate
• Experience of assessing the work of others, feeding back appropriately and ensuring staff are working within defined SOPs
• Knowledge and experience of recording data, including sensitive information, on pharmacy computerised data record systems
• Experience of dispensing drugs for patients, clients in specialist area, providing advice to patients, carers
• Experience in organising daily activities of staff within a team
• Experience of conducting and reporting project & audit work
• Experience of working with a wide range of other health care professionals
• Experience of providing training

Desirable criteria

• Training staff
• Audit participation
• Experience in developing and implementing SOPs
• Experience of recruitment and selection processes
• Experience of communicating with a broad range of stakeholders

SkillsEssential criteria

• Ability to effectively teach and deliver specialist training to Pharmacy staff
• Proven ability to undertake audit/project
• Proven presentation skills
• Proven time management skills
• Organisational skills
• Proven communication skills
• Proven ability to write a procedure /guidelines
• Good team player
• Able to use initiative
• IT skills
• Supervisory skills
• Awareness of barriers to understanding and ability to implement tools to overcome barriers
• Able to plan ongoing training and assessment in pharmacy procedures
• Ability to motivate and engage all levels of staff
• Able to communicate at all levels

Desirable criteria

• Flexible
• Supervisory skills
• Ability to write a procedure /guidelines

KnowledgeEssential criteria

• Ward based knowledge
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to create documents and spreadsheets and extract information
• Dispensing
• Pharmaceutical Law
• Pharmaceutical Practice
• Hospital Pharmacy Practice
• Good clinical knowledge
• Medicines management processes
• Drug Distribution
• Patient Counselling
• CPD portfolio
• Working Knowledge of Pharmacy computer, including WellSky, robot systems, Lorenzo

Desirable criteria

• Excel Spreadsheets, minimum intermediate level

Our values

We want our staff to believe in, demonstrate and live our values in everything we do.

Include
We value the diversity and experience of our community colleagues and partners, creating relationships and climates that provide an opportunity to share, collaborate and grow together.

Respect
We create a safe environment where we are curious of the lived experience of others, seek out best practice and are open to listening and hearing new ideas.

Improve
We are committed to consistently delivering excellent services and continuously looking to improve through a creative workforce that feels empowered to act in service of our shared purpose.

Committed to our Community

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion for all job applicants, staff, patients and the wider community. We want to create a workforce which represents the communities we serve. We are on a journey to become a more inclusive organisation and we welcome applications from everyone regardless of their background. In particular we encourage applications from candidates with disabilities, and candidates from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds who are currently under-represented in various parts of our workforce .

We understand the importance of balancing work and home life. We are committed to support flexible working for our staff wherever possible and all our employees are given the opportunity to discuss potential for flexible working.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and achieved our status in 2019.

We will remove barriers that prospective candidates might face at any stage of our recruitment process. If you have a disability and would like the advert in an alternative format, or would like to talk about how we can adjust the interview process to best support you, please contact us by emailing resourcing.enh-tr@nhs.net

We are also proud to support our UK armed forces by supporting Reservists, Cadet Instructors, Veterans and military spouses/partners into employment and offering supportive policies that value their contribution to the community and to our Trust.

We are committed to being a carer-friendly environment, addressing the complex needs of families with caring responsibilities. In partnership with Carers in Hertfordshire, all our working carers have access to support from recruitment. We are also a member of Carers UK, providing resources to make balancing work and caring easier. Our approach is inclusive, recognizing diverse challenges and creating a supportive environment where carers feel valued.

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