Senior Pharmacy Technician

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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Communication & Relationship skills
• Communicate professionally with staff on all levels, both internal and external relating to trial activities, regarding information which may be confidential and sensitive in nature.
• Communicate with sponsors for monitoring appointments and meetings verbally and in written format.
• Liaise with other health professionals within research teams providing advice and support pertaining to clinical trial pharmacy issues.

Analytical & Judgemental skills
• Exercise judgement when dealing with all enquires. Assess and manage query if possible, referring to the Lead clinical trials technician, senior trials technicians or pharmacists as appropriate.
• Check pharmacy files for missing data and organise, retrieve, and record data in a timely manner.

Planning and organisational skills
• Co-ordination of monitoring visit requests, ensuring availability of staff and workspace.
• Ensuring clinical trial pre orders and vial allocations are turned around in a timely fashion to prevent any delay in patient treatment.
• Support co-ordination of study set-up with the clinical trials pharmacist in a timely manner.

Physical skills
• Work with sponsor IVRS/IWRS for ordering, acknowledging orders, dispensing update calls for Investigational Medicinal Products.
• Supports the generation of worksheets and labels for Investigational Medicinal Products for both Aseptics and the Dispensary.

Responsibility Patient/Client Care
• Dispensing and preparation of medicines for clinical trials in accordance with departmental and study specific SOPs
• To act as a certified accredited checking technician, supporting the final check of clinical trial prescriptions.
• To provide support to other pharmacy staff in the dispensing of complex clinical trials.
• Support and advise key staff accordingly in relation to handling, labelling, and dispensing for all new products used in clinical trials.
• Ensure all trial related reports and documentation are maintained within the timeframes defined by the sponsor.

Responsibility Policy & Service Development
• Follow all relevant policy and legislation (e.g., EU Directive)
• Prepare master worksheet and labels for approval by appropriate pharmacists using Sponsor supplied documents.
• Awareness of COSHH regulations in the safe handling and storage all clinical trial materials.
• Assists SATO, Student Technicians, and the CTA in ensuring supplies of Investigational Medicinal Product are ordered in a timely manner.

Responsibility Information Resources
• Use computer-based data storage systems and IVRS/IWRS to record clinical trial activity.
• Work with Microsoft office programmes, requiring standard software skills.
• Maintain individual patient treatment records on Trust based systems, ensuring information is up to date, accurate and complies with Data Protection Act.

Responsibility Research & Development
• Assist pharmacy team in all areas of R&I administration as required.
• Ensure all drug accountability for all clinical trials are processed accurately and in a timely manner ensuring drug accountability is up to date at the time of a monitoring visit, audits, and Inspections.
• Assists the ATO/CTA in maintenance of pharmacy documentation where required.
• Support regulatory compliance across all clinical research services within pharmacy.

Freedom to Act
• Post holder is expected to follow all relevant protocols, SOPs, and standard practice.
• Clinical Trials Team Leader is available as point of reference for any queries and will meet regularly with staff.
• Plan and organise own time and workload activity with prioritisation.

Physical, Mental and Emotional Effort
• Long periods of time spent using screens and keyboard to input information
• Prolonged concentration is regularly required e.g., when entering new products onto the computer system to produce worksheets and labels.

Working Conditions
• The Trust operates a range of policies, e.g. Human resources, clinical practice (available on the Trust Intranet). All Trusts employees must observe and adhere to the provisions outlined in these policies.
• Participate in the extended hours of the department, if required. To be able to participate in weekend and bank holiday working as required by the service. This may be reviewed and altered depending on the service demands.
• Ability to demonstrate the organisational values and behaviours and the positive working relationship policy.

Other;
• Support all aspects of pharmacy requirements to set-up clinical trials.
• Provide support to the clinical trials lead technician to ensure activities within the pharmacy department are managed in accordance with the International Conference of Harmonisation Good Clinical Practice Guidelines (ICH-GCP), Good manufacturing Practice (GMP), the Research Governance Framework for Health & Community Care (2001) and the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004.
• Support the clinical trials lead technician and clinical trials pharmacist with internal, external audits and regulatory inspections by the Medicines and Health Regulatory Authority (MHRA) within pharmacy.
We are not specifically seeking those with hospital or clinical trials experience; several members of our team have joined from outside of hospital backgrounds. We are more interested in your ability to show drive, ambition, willingness to learn, manage workload, organisational and team working skills.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• NVQ Level 3 / BTEC Pharmaceutical Sciences or equivalent
• Registered as a pharmacy technician with GPhC
• Accredited Accuracy Checking Technician or willing to work towards

Desirable criteria

• Current certified ICH-GCP training.

Experience

Essential criteria

• At least 1 year post qualification experience or willing to complete a progression period to gain experience post qualification

Desirable criteria

• Clinical Trials experience.
• Hospital Experience
• Oncology Experience
• Aseptic Experience

Skills

Essential criteria

• Good initiative, ability to work on own or as part of a team.
• Self- motivating
• Ability to work under pressure
• Good interpersonal skills. Ability to communicate effectively, verbally and written, with a wide range of staff and external drug companies.
• Good time management
• IT proficient able to use Microsoft office applications eg Word, teams, excel and outlook,
• Ability to train other members of staff
• Calm under pressure, maintaining accuracy and attention to detail.
• Adaptable to change
• Prepared to take responsibility and able to work without direct supervision
• Demonstrate initiative: proactive and self-motivated Able to work on both sites and to be flexible to meet the needs of the role

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Knowledge of ICH -GCP
• Knowledge of COSHH

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of oncology
• Knowledge of GMP

Values

Essential criteria

• Ability to demonstrate the organisational values and behaviours

Other

Essential criteria

• Participating in extended working hours, weekend, bank holidays if required)

The closing date for this post may be extended if there are insufficient applicants or brought forward if there is a high volume of applicants.

Application Information - If you have not heard from us within four weeks of the closing date, I regret that on this occasion your application will have been unsuccessful.

Sponsorship Information - We are an approved sponsoring organisation. Applications will be considered from applicants requiring sponsorship alongside all other applications. Please be aware, not all roles are eligible for sponsorship. You can review the list of eligible role and requirements on the government website.

Pre-Employment Checks - To confirm your suitability for the role, we will carry out pre-employment checks in line with NHS Employment Check Standards. These include:

• Identity verification
• Right to work check
• Disclosure and barring service (DBS)/Criminal record check (dependent on role, payment of this will be the applicants responsibility)
• Professional registration and/or qualification check
• Occupational health assessment
• Employment history and reference validation

All applicants external to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust will be required to provide their HMRC employment history to cover the most recent three years employment. This information will used to validate employment history and references.

If you require sponsorship, we will assess your eligibility based on current government guidance. If the role is not eligible and you cannot demonstrate your right to work, your conditional offer may be withdrawn.

✓ If You're Offered the Role - you will be agreeing to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust transferring the information contained in this application to its preferred applicant management system. If you are offered a job information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system. Please note, all communication regarding your application will be made via email, please ensure you check your junk/spam folders as emails are sometimes filtered there.

The Inter-Authority Transfer (IAT) process is a critical and beneficial component of ESR and will form part of the recruitment process. In the event that you are successful following interview your previous NHS employment data, if applicable will be transferred from your current / most recent employer.

Sponsorship Information - We are an approved sponsoring organisation. Applications will be considered from applicants requiring sponsorship alongside all other applications. Please be aware, not all roles are eligible for sponsorship. You can review the list of eligible role and requirements on the government website.

No Smoking Policy - You should be aware the Trust operates a No Smoking Policy and therefore employees are not permitted to smoke at work.

Additional Information - We want to ensure that everyone who works at the Christie or uses our services is welcomed, valued and treated with dignity and respect. The Christie values diversity and is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for all and fair representation across the organisation at all levels. In support of these commitments, we particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people and people with disabilities for this post. Appointment will be only on merit.

We are committed to creating a balanced and diverse workforce. As such we welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. Together we will foster inclusion and tackle inequity and health inequalities in cancer care.

As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the vacancy.

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity in all our activities. We have a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery in any of its forms, including slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour, and human trafficking. We are fully committed to acting ethically and with transparency in all our business dealings and relationships, and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in our organisation or supply chains.

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

• Job Description and Person Specification (PDF, 206.8KB)
• The Christie Values and Behaviours (PDF, 919.5KB)
• Strategy Brochure (PDF, 1.0MB)
• Travel to The Christie (PDF, 3.8MB)