- Undertake patient facing and patient supporting roles to ensure effective medicines use, through shared decision-making conversations with patients.
- Carry out medicines optimisation tasks including effective medicine administration, supporting medication reviews and medicines reconciliation. Where required, utilise consultation skills to work in partnership with patients to ensure they use their medicines effectively.
- 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.
- Work with the PCN MDT to ensure efficient medicines optimisation, including implementing efficient ordering and return processes and reducing wastage.
All pharmacy technicians must have completed or be enrolled in, be undertaking or be prepared to start an approved 18-month training pathway (e.g. Primary care pharmacy educational pathway), PCPEP or Medicines Optimisation in Care Homes (MOCH).
Pharmacy technicians must be registered with the general pharmaceutical council. Entry to the PCPEP programme will include the option for an accreditation of prior learning (APEL) process.
- Providing safe and effective pharmacy services
- Supplying medicines and devices to patients, whether on prescription or over the counter
- Achieving the best outcomes through a patient’s medicines
- Assembling medicines for prescription
- Providing information to patients and other healthcare professionals
- Managing areas of medicines supply such as dispensaries
- Supervising other pharmacy staff’s training and development
- Answering customers’ questions face to face or by phone
- Pre-packing, assembling and labelling medicines
- Referring problems or queries to the pharmacist
- Manufacturing aseptic dispensing
- Quality control
- Procurement
- Information technology
- Clinical trials
- Medicines information
e-Learning for Healthcare
The following resources can be accessed via e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH). E-LfH provides free e-learning programmes which can support you in your professional development.
If you do not already have an account, click here to register using your NHS email address. If you already have an account, please use the same link to firstly log in to access the following resources.
- The Resources for Pharmacy Staff programme contains a range of resources relevant to this role. You may chose to focus on the section entitled “Medication Administration by Pharmacy Technicians”
- The E-ECLA learning path: pharmacy professionals learning path is designed to support pharmacy professionals when dispensing medications to manage symptoms in people near the end of life.
- Whilst the pharmacy in primary care programme is aimed at Hospital-based pre-registration pharamicists, it also introduces to the role of the GP Pharmacist.
- Clinical Pharmacology and Prescribing: This programme is designed to support medical students (and students of other healthcare professions) to develop a firm grounding in the principles of clinical pharmacology, which underpin safe and effective prescribing in the NHS.
- GPhC Resources: This session provides an overview of useful resources for pre-registration tutors and their trainees.
- Other useful resources for the Clinical Pharmacist role are Hypertension, Prescribing and Providing Medicines Advice
- Shared Decision Making: The Shared Decision Making e-learning resource provides guidance on what Shared Decision Making (SDM) is and how to implement it in practice. It provides resources to help health professionals learn the required skills, such as films to illustrate examples of good and bad consultations and prompts, along with resources to help implement shared decision making in practice. This contains a module on helping patients make informed decisions in Primary Care.
- Prescribing and Providing Medicines Advice: This course provides information about prescribing and providing medicines advice. The course consists of one e-learning knowledge session and one scenario session that includes a range of scenarios for you to test your knowledge.
- Introduction to Integrated care systems for pharmacy professionals: As a pharmacy professional, you are expected to deliver services based on the priorities of the integrated care systems (ICSs) in your area. This session introduces the principles and aims of ICSs, your role within them, and considers the patient’s journey through the system.
- Antimicrobial Stewardship for Community Pharmacy: This course addresses the predicted impact antimicrobial resistance could have, and the important role community pharmacy staff can play by supporting self-care to prevent future infections; and giving patients information when they dispense antibiotics.
The below resources demonstrate this role in relation to the care network:
These lists are not exhaustive and the programmes available are regularly updated, so we recommend visiting the e-LfH portal and reviewing the available resources via using the “View full catalogue” function, or the “Search the e-learning" function.
If you currently work in primary care, and have found e-learning resources that were helpful, and were not included on the above lists, please let us know on traininghub.nenc@hee.nhs.uk and we will update this resource so that it can be of use to others.
To ensure the role is supported within primary care, the PT will have access to appropriate clinical supervision and an appropriate named individual in the PCN to provide general advice and support on a day to day basis. Clinical Supervision of Pharmacy Technicians can be conducted by:
- Clinical Pharmacist
- Senior Clinical Pharmacist (5 years PG training)
- GP
- Other prescribing ACP (3+ years)
NHSEI Clinical Supervision guidance can be found here.
Pharmacists are required to undertake a masters level qualification (MPharmS) plus a one-year post graduate pre-registration structured programme regulated by the GOhC. The new curriculum for pre-registration trainee pharmacy technicians is being tested with placements in general practice, through the Pharmacy Integration Fund (PhIF).
Level 3 Pharmacy Technicians through NUTH, need to be registered with General Pharmaceutical Council.
Local providers of MPharmS:
Recognised Combined Qualifications
The GPhC recognise the following qualifications:
Level 3 Diploma in Principles and Practice for Pharmacy Technicians from the following bodies:
Diploma in Pharmacy Services L7 from Scottish Qualification Authority.
Recognised Non-Combined Qualifications
Scottish Qualification Authority:
Approved Combined Programme Providers
The GPhC accredits the following programme providers to offer pharmacy technician training courses.
Approved Apprenticeships Pathways
The apprenticeship pathway is made up of qualifications/courses offered by the providers below
- Buttercups
- Pearson/ Edexcel
- University of East Anglia
- Open Awards
For a full list of accredited courses and more information, please click here.
100% of actual salary plus defined on-costs, up to the maximum reimbursable amount of £40,159 over 12 months.
Professional Body Resources
This is the regulatory body for Pharmaceutical roles including Pharmacy Technicians. Useful resources include educational tools, standards and news.
These standards have been produced by the GPhC to ensure that the learning outcomes, skill and knowledge are consistent across pharmaceutic roles.
This Advanced Pharmacist Handbook has been created to support navigation of the routes to and through advanced practice by describing pathways for all sectors of pharmacy.
Role Overview
This updated DES outlines the role of the Pharmacy Technician and what is expected from PCNs (page 82-84).
The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS FT have created this guidance to demonstrate the role of pharmacy in patient care, and the differences between this role and other pharmacy roles.
This resource provides an overview of the Pharmacy Technician role and the requirements of the role.
This article, provided by NHS England demonstrates the key role being played by Pharmacy Technicians.
This document provides an overview of the Pharmacy Technician role and the requirements of the role.
Relevant Research
Produced by the HEE Knowledge Management team, the Evidence Brief offers a quick overview of the published reports, research and evidence on Pharmacy.
Jobs
If you are looking for a new position related to this role, we recommend checking both NHS Jobs and HealthjobsUK.
NHS Jobs is the official online recruitment service for the NHS in England and Wales, with over 30,000 jobs posted every month.
Hosted by trac.jobs, HealthJobsUK is among the leading job boards in the health and public sector within the UK.
