Job summary
- Main area
- Prisons pharmacy
- Grade
- Band 5
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 277-5864856-EXET-J
- Employer
- Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- HMP Exeter
- Town
- Exeter
- Salary
- £29,970 - £36,483 pa
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 06/01/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Prison Services Pharmacy Technician
Band 5
Job overview
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.
Wondering what it’s like to work within offender healthcare?
“I really enjoy working in the Pharmacy Service for Oxleas, my role is extremely varied and I work within a very supportive team. I find my role rewarding as it is all about enabling patient’s rehabilitation and I enjoy interacting with patients daily and building relationships with them. Oxleas are a good employer and there are plenty of opportunities to be supported through qualifications and training which then allows you to progress through different bands within the team.” Amanda - Pharmacy Tech.
Working for our organisation
Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.
We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:
- ±’r Kind
- ±’r
- We Listen
- We Care
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.
(Full JD can be downloaded in supporting documents section)
Oxleas Prison Services Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and provides the pharmacy services to the prison pharmacy contracts. Due to the recent contract award from NHS England, we are now providing pharmacy services (OPS Ltd) and Healthcare Services (Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust) to the Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Devon and Dorset Prisons and are recruiting to newly established posts.
Oxleas Prison Services Ltd and Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust has a long history of innovation, with established prescribing guidelines, excellent relationships with medical staff, a strong culture of leading clinical audit and research projects and an excellent publication record. All of these attributes we wish to extend to the prison pharmacy and healthcare services.
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.
You will need to provide:
Proof of right to work documentation
Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographicID
Proof of address documentation
Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.
Address History:
5 years address history will be needed.
Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.
Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.
In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from:
If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website ().
Person specification
Education/Qualifications
Essential criteria
- NVQ level 3 Pharmacy Services or equivalent
- Registration with GPhC as a pharmacy technician
- Evidence of CPD
Desirable criteria
- Working towards Accredited Checking or MM Technician Certificate
Experience
Essential criteria
- 2 years’ experience of working in a pharmacy
Desirable criteria
- Previous prison or mental health pharmacy experience
Skills and abilities
Essential criteria
- Good knowledge of working within a set of SOPs
- Ability to use (or learn to use) computer packages including Pharmacy Manager/ JAC and Microsoft
Desirable criteria
- Ability to use initiative to problem solve
- Some understanding of mental illness and substance misuse and their treatment
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Rachel O'Sullivan
- Job title
- Head of Healthcare
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01392 415788
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