An exploration of community pharmacy technician roles in Wales

Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy

MA Education Dissertation

Background

Healthcare models in Wales are changing in response to unprecedented pressure on the NHS. In the future, community pharmacies will provide a greater range of clinical services locally. The pharmacy technician profession must be enabled to work at the ‘top of their clinical competence’ to support these changes.

Objective

The purpose of the research was to gather intelligence on existing community pharmacy technician roles and ascertain the barriers and enablers to role development. Methods: An online questionnaire was used to obtain quantitative and qualitative data from 213 community pharmacy technicians across Wales. Four semi-structured telephone interviews were undertaken to provide further qualitative data.

Results

Dispensing remains a core function for community pharmacy technicians, as does final accuracy checking. There is some evidence of engagement in leadership and management roles, as well as delivery of enhanced services such as smoking cessation, albeit limited. Enablers to role development include workplace support and access to training. Barriers include staffing, business pressures and inability to access training.

Conclusion

There is scope to enable community pharmacy technicians to further develop their roles in key areas such as processing queries and delivering services. This will require investment in post-registration training and improved use of delegation and skill mix.