Band 3 Medicines Optimisation Pharmacy Assistant - Callington Hospital

Hours: Full time - 37.5 hours per week

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP) is a significant provider of high quality mental health services across a core catchment area covering Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon and Wiltshire.

The Trust provides services for people with mental health needs, with needs relating to drug or alcohol dependency and mental health services for people with learning disabilities. Increasingly these services are delivered in community settings. Our community services are supported by inpatient units that provide short term assessment, treatment and care.

The AWP pharmacy service supplies medicines and provides clinical support to wards and teams across our core catchment area. We have two dispensaries: Calne (Wiltshire) and at Callington Road Hospital (Bristol). 

This is a new and exciting opportunity for a pharmacy assistant to join our developing medicines optimisation team. We provide high quality support to our patients and are looking for a motivated, flexible and forward-thinking pharmacy assistant. This post offers you the opportunity to build on your existing skills, as well as developing new ones in a supportive environment.

Working hours are 9am until 5pm Monday to Friday, with an occasional commitment to the Saturday and bank holiday rotas. Working hours for weekends and bank holidays are 10am-1pm.

Main duties of the job

This role will be based across the BNSSG system, at both ward level, as well as in community mental health teams, delivering a high quality medicines optimisation service. This site covers wards providing a specialised forensic, eating disorder and child and adolescent service to patients.

The role will involve working as part of the wider multidisciplinary team consisting of Pharmacy Technicians, Pharmacy Assistants, Pharmacists, Nursing staff, having direct patient contact at ward level and will be involved in contributing to patient care. You will be maintaining stock, ordering patient-specific medicines and undertaking audits which feed into our clinical governance meetings.

The role also involves working at Callington Road Hospital pharmacy dispensary, performing general pharmaceutical duties under the supervision of a Dispensary Manager and/or Pharmacist, in line with current policies and procedures. You should be caring and passionate about service users and committed to providing patient centred care.

Working for our organisation

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust) a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Person specification

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Car driver or to be mobile with the facility to move quickly across a geographically dispersed area with limited access to public transport.
• Effective communication skills, to communicate with a wide range of people (e.g. patients, carers, nursing and medical staff).
• Able to work calmly under pressure and have capacity for problem solving.

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Effective listening skills.
• Able to work flexibly within a team.
• Effective communication skills, able to communicate with a wide range of people (e.g. patients, carers, nursing and medical staff).
• Able to prioritise tasks and respond to urgent demands whilst managing own workload.
• Computer literate including Microsoft Office/Outlook.

Desirable criteria

• Able to handle conflict and differences of opinion effectively in a mature and professional manner.
• Knowledge of EMIS (Ascribe).

Education and Qualification

Essential criteria

• NVQ Level 2 or equivalent.

Desirable criteria

• Previous hospital experience.
• PWDS MOPT Unit 1 or equivalent.