Pilot and scoping for the creation of an innovative rotational, cross sector, pharmacy technician workforce within Medway and Swale

This project supports workforce transformation and innovative practice for Medway and Swale, by the creation of a rotational PCN and acute pharmacy technician workforce. This will improve the management of medications across the system and gain a greater understanding of medicines management across the entire patient journey.

This project supports making pharmacy an attractive career to ensure a sustainable workforce. The hospital is the primary trainer of pharmacy technicians, a rotational role allows new and current technicians to gain experience across the interface, and retain skilled staff within the ICP. Growth of these roles will allow for career progression.

The aim of this project is to provide an evidence base for an innovative way of working across the interface and demonstrate the benefits to the system and patients of training and developing pharmacy technicians with experience of both primary and secondary care.

This evidence base can be used to implement a new way of working at pace that is attractive for pharmacy technicians, and improves medicines management across the ICP. This new role will improve medicines safety and continuity of care for patients, whilst enabling staff to identify risks and gaps in provision that we can work to reduce.

Utilising an experienced member of staff for autonomous working and rapid assessment of available benefits across the health system. A senior pharmacy technician will scope and identify how best we can use the technician resource collaboratively across Acute and Primary care. They will identify key areas for focus for future rotational pharmacy technicians.

The project will include 1 month of scoping and baseline data collection, 6 months working within the PCN identifying and demonstrating the benefits of the role and 2 months to analyse, write up and create the next steps. The project will be supported by the Medway Innovation Institute and MFT Business Intelligence team.

The expected output is the completion of a job description and business case for the implementation of a permanent rotational service between initially the PCN’s and the hospital but with scope to expand into other areas including, mental health and community services.

This project will scope out the roles, and the impact, that a pharmacy technician can have within a GP practice, the projects to work on to improve transfer of care and medicines safety and how to achieve follow up across the interface. Alongside this we would expect to publish the project in an open forum to share the learning.