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Reflection on practice: Breaking down barriers

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Reflection on practice: Breaking down barriers

There has been much talk lately on the quality of education and the roles of community pharmacy technicians, but it’s now time for things to change, says Joanne Taylor

There is a very controversial (and frustrating) opinion that some in the profession hold: that community pharmacy technicians are considered second best to our hospital colleagues and are thought of as being less professional and less knowledgeable. But what makes people think this way?

Is it because training in the community is viewed as being less clinical than that of our hospital colleagues? Years ago, this was the view held by some with regard to pharmacists working in community compared with those in hospital. Pharmacists in ‘retail pharmacy’, as it used to be called, were sometimes viewed as shop workers or keepers rather than medical professionals.

However, this view changed over time and community pharmacists are now widely seen as accessible professional medicines experts working in the high street. Unfortunately, this is not always the case with community pharmacy technicians, who are disappointingly still sometimes perceived as inferior to their colleagues in the hospital sector. But what can we do to change this?

Community pharmacy technicians, once qualified and registered, can train to become accredited checking pharmacy technicians. However, their knowledge of counselling and advising patients, healthcare promotion and being a patient facing professional are all but taken away from them as they seem to disappear to the furthest away part of the dispensary or even another room to accuracy check monitored dosage systems, never to be seen again within the front of the shop (or pharmacy, as I prefer it to be called!).

The key question is: are they utilising their skills this way or are they losing all the skills learnt during their training to do a job in which they have very limited direct patient contact, even though it is seen as career progression? If career development in community pharmacy is ever to be on par with hospital, then pharmacy technicians need to use their skills fully and be utilised as an integral part of the team, in addition to any extended roles like accuracy checking.

Our colleagues in the hospital sector are leading in clinics such as warfarin clinics; they are on wards advising patients on medicines and doing medicines reconciliation; they are liaising with consultants and other healthcare professionals, in addition to the accuracy checking of prescriptions in the dispensary. If community pharmacy technicians were to have a more holistic way of working once qualified and suitably registered as healthcare professionals, then perhaps the pharmacy technicians ‘in the high street’ could be as well regarded and perhaps even seen as equals to their hospital counterparts, and their skills and expertise would at last be fully utilised.

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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