Senior Pharmacy Assistant

Wrightington Wigan & Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Due to considerable investment, the Pharmacy Department at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is seeking to appoint a motivated and dynamic Senior Pharmacy Assistant.

Are you ambitious and looking for an exciting new challenge? Do you want to be an integral part of an acute Trust that embraces transformation and is passionate about delivering safe and effective care? If your answers are yes, we have the perfect opportunity for you to join our award-winning pharmacy team.

Directly accountable to a Lead Pharmacy Technician, you will help the team to shape services and standards, driving improvements in medicines optimisation. You will have a good background as a pharmacy assistant and will use your skills to deliver high-quality care to our patients.

You will need to be motivated, with excellent communication skills and the ability to work under pressure, to provide excellent patient care and deliver the Trust's Medicines Optimisation strategy.

Please note that you must hold an NVQ Level 2 Pharmacy Services qualification to be eligible to apply for this role.

Please note this vacancy may close before the advertised closing date if a sufficient number of suitable applications are received.

Main Duties of the Job

As part of the multidisciplinary team, you will improve key performance indicators such as time to discharge and length of stay and support medicines administration. The pharmacy department is fully modernised and we have an integrated electronic health record/electronic prescribing system.

All assistants are expected to work closely with a well-established team of pharmacists and technicians to ensure our services are safe, effective, and caring. This approach has been shown to reduce length of stay, get patients home earlier, reduce readmission rates, reduce drug expenditure, and improve patient and staff experience. You will spend your working week on your ward or in the dispensary and actively participate in the multi-disciplinary team supporting medicines administration and processes related to admission and safe discharge.

About Us

Choose Well - Choose WWL

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are the proud providers of acute hospital and community services to the people of the Wigan Borough and surrounding areas. At WWL, we value our staff believing that 'happy staff makes for happy patients'. We have a recognised track record in staff engagement and living our values 'the WWL Way'.

WWL is committed to placing the patient at the heart of everything we do, and in the provision of safe, effective care that acknowledges and ensures dignity. With this in mind, we are seeking to recruit people who share our values and beliefs.

Job Responsibilities

Duties and Responsibilities

• To receive, interpret, dispense, and handout prescriptions in line with departmental standard operating procedures.
• To undertake patient counselling in the pharmacy/wards under the supervision of a pharmacist or more senior pharmacy technician and in accordance with pharmacy procedures.
• To supply medication to wards, departments, and other agencies.
• To recycle or destroy medicines returned from wards, departments, and external agencies.
• To order, issue, and receive medication and maintain the pharmacy stock control system.
• To check expiry dates and safe storage of medicines within areas of responsibility ensuring effective action is taken when necessary.
• To participate in clinical trials under direct supervision ensuring relevant details are maintained in trials documentation.
• To assist in audits and surveys as directed by line manager.
• To support medicines administration at ward level.

Planning and Organisational Duties

• To understand and implement relevant departmental procedures.
• To suggest improvements to departmental procedures through line management where appropriate.

Communications and Key Working Relationships

• To communicate in a professional manner, factual information about the availability of medicines to other Trust staff, external departments, and patients.
• To participate in the induction training of student technicians, pre-registration pharmacists, and other relevant members of the pharmacy team.
• To train and supervise the work of pharmacy assistants.

Person Specification

Knowledge

• Basic computer skills.

Skills

• Ability to work in a team or independently.
• Methodical.
• Accurate.

Experience

• Previous work experience in a pharmacy.

Qualifications

• NVQ Level 2 Pharmacy Services.

Additional

• May be required to lift heavy objects from time to time.
• Speak English to an appropriate standard relevant to their role, i.e., with confidence and accuracy, using correct sentence structures and vocabulary, and without hesitation.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer Name

Wrightington Wigan & Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust