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Time for community pharmacy to talk

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Time for community pharmacy to talk

Joanne Taylor explains why community pharmacy technicians should engage with the new ‘sounding board’ for APTUK

Earlier this month, I was fortunate to attend the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK) branch day in Birmingham. This event occurs just once or twice a year and provides a chance for local branch representatives to get together, have CPD opportunities and share good practice. It’s vital that pharmacy technicians do this and the branch network is an important part of APTUK.

Pharmacy technicians from all sectors of pharmacy run APTUK branches. However, engaging with community pharmacy technicians can sometimes prove difficult. APTUK has a higher representation from the hospital sector compared to any other sector, including community, despite the high number of community pharmacy technicians on the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) register.

With new roles emerging and community pharmacists taking on clinical roles that have traditionally been undertaken by doctors, as well as new technologies, pharmacy service processes may change (e.g. if more hub and spoke pharmacies appear). Community pharmacy technicians are vital to these service changes and different ways of working.

With this in mind, I was able to share with event delegates details of a new ‘Community Pharmacy Technician’s Sounding Board’, which will run as a group under APTUK. This will enable APTUK to gather opinions, information and points of view from pharmacy technicians working in the community sector on professional practice as it evolves, giving us a balanced and well-informed view.

At the moment, membership of the group is open only to APTUK members employed in a community pharmacy, but we will hopefully extend it soon and representative pharmacy technicians from all community backgrounds will be invited to come forward. Part of the remit will be to establish types of roles currently being undertaken by pharmacy technicians in community pharmacy, so that APTUK can look at the current ways of working, progression of roles and responsibilities and establish what pharmacy technicians are currently doing in their daily tasks within pharmacy.

If you are doing anything within your workplace that you think APTUK would like to be aware of then let us know. It would be really good to hear from you.

Joanne is a registered pharmacy technician and ACPT, and is professional standards lead at Vittoria Healthcare. She is national secretary for the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK), and is a member of the Medicines Rebalancing Programme Board at the Department of Health as well as TM’s editorial advisory panel.

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