Prison Services Pharmacy Technician

Are you ready to unlock your potential within a challenging, creative and fast paced work environment? Do you want to escape your current job role and work with people to build positive and productive lives, whatever their past? Now is the time to break into offender healthcare and develop your career.

As part of the South West Prison Healthcare contract awarded to Oxleas NHS trust in 2022, we are able to expand recruitment and are looking for compassionate, knowledgeable and motivated Pharmacy Technician’s to join our friendly team at HMP Exeter.

Our healthcare team have a real impact on promoting health and well-being to those in prison and we pride ourselves on using skills and strategies that instil hope for patients future resettlement back into the community. We directly deliver Mental Health, Physical Health, Pharmacy and Clinical Substance Misuse in an integrated healthcare delivery model to provide effective and responsive care to improve wellbeing and support better outcomes in the future.

As part of our pharmacy service (OPS), you will enjoy all the benefits of NHS AfC employment (inc pension) with the opportunity to work within a forward-thinking service, who encourage career and personal development to all staff to increase their clinical and interpersonal skills.

Main duties of the job

As a Pharmacy Technician, you will be providing a medicines management service to patients within the prison with the professional support of a prison service pharmacist. You will administer medicines to patients against a valid prescription, ensuring this is taken correctly, provide advice to patients about the appropriate use of medicines and promote healthy lifestyles to aid their rehabilitation.

You will dispense prescriptions and stock items, whilst supervising assistants when in the dispensary. There will also be elements of stock control involved in your role, such as undertaking stock top-up services and reviewing expiry dates and storage facilities for all medicines, reporting any deficiencies to the prison service pharmacist.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Key Task and Responsibilities

• To provide a medicines optimisation services to the prison.
• To provide a medicines administration service to offenders at the medicines administration times as part of a 7 day per week rota.
• To undertake medicines reconciliation for prisoners admitted to the prison.
• To supervise assistants, when in the dispensary in providing dispensing services.
• To be an accredited checking technician providing final dispensing checks or medicines optimisation qualification.
• To ensure high standards of work in the dispensary, in clinics and for when out on the wings and to ensure all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are read and adhered to.
• To assist the Senior Prisons Technician with writing, updating and monitoring the use of medicines optimisation SOPs.

Person specification

Education/Qualifications

• NVQ level 3 Pharmacy Services or equivalent
• Registration with GPhC as a pharmacy technician
• Evidence of CPD
• Working towards Accredited Checking or MM Technician Certificate

Experience

• 2 years’ experience of working in a pharmacy
• Previous prison or mental health pharmacy experience

Skills and abilities

• Good knowledge of working within a set of SOPs
• Ability to use (or learn to use) computer packages including Pharmacy Manager/ JAC and Microsoft
• Ability to use initiative to problem solve
• Some understanding of mental illness and substance misuse and their treatment

We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that welcomes and supports individuals of all abilities. Remember, if you meet the minimum criteria for this role and you have a disability, you can be guaranteed an interview under the Disability Confident Scheme - Please ensure you select this on your application form. We would encourage you to be open about your needs so we can work with you to design a comfortable and accessible interview experience.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ:

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.