Quote:
Originally Posted by drh785  I recently applied for a job at a hospital pharmacy and was astonished to hear about the amount of work that technicians do!
They seem to do everything!!
They check if they are ACT's
They wright up TTO's
They check all the drug charts on the wards.
They manufacture everything - non-sterile and aseptic.
All the pharmacists do is clinically check the charts and then how often is there a problem!!
I quickly withdrew my application and decided i will carry on with locums for a while.
It must be really boring being a hospital pharmacist - doing virtually bugger-all all day!
What are hospital pharmacists views?
Do you think you will be made redundant one day?
Just techs - what a disaster!
Hospital pharmacists i feel have let this happen! |
In my hospital, we have three types of technician: Dispensary, Clinical, and Technical Services.
Dispensary technicians are pretty much those that you would find in community, with the addition that they tend to be better trained (NVQ3 with BTEC underpinning knowledge). They are able to deal with a much wider range of dosage forms (injections, chemo etc) and also undertake named-patient top-ups, usually on mental health wards. Obviously, they are also ACT's
Clinical technicians are usually ward-based. These techs have completed a clinical diloma are are able to undertake a variety of roles on the ward, mostly the basic roles such as: Drug history taking, checking the accuracy of transcribed charts and sorting out the orders. This frees up the pharmacists time to undertake more complicated work, such as concordance issues, clinical checking, TDM and giving advice to medics on prescribing issues, and advice to nurses on administration issues (ie via PEG, NG, JEG tubes).
Technical services technicians make sterile and non-sterile items, everything from creams to ready-made chemo. Sounds complicated but is really all down to experience. Pharmacists can therefore concentrate on stability, compatibility and formulation issues - stuff you need the MPharm to understand.
Hospitals will only start community pharmacists as band 6 pharmacists - the lowest grade. This is a reflection of the lack of clinical knowledge and training, especially in mental health, oncology, paediatrics, renal pharmacy and surgery. When I do community locums, I feel that half the time I don't need to be there - the techs are more than capable. The clinical issues I pick up should have been spotted by the regular pharmacist a long time ago!(but that is my own experience - I may be covering for a few exceptionally dim pharmacists).
Basically, technicians do the jobs in hospitals so that pharmacists can concentrate on harder clinical problems.