Pharmacy Technicians Job a Better Deal in The Uk: More Money More Opportunity

Work of a clinical trials technician in the UK offers more opportunity

Many clinical trials are performed in UK hospitals and technicians are becoming increasingly involved in their day-to-day organization. This piece, describes the work of a clinical trials pharmacy technician in the UK.

Working as a team:

With many people involved on clinical trials, it’s a clinical co-coordinators job in many respects. The team  includes investigators (usually a consultant clinician at the hospital), clinical research associates from the sponsoring organizations (usually pharmaceutical company employees), research nurses, ward-based medical, nursing and pharmacy staff, dispensary staff,  quality assurance staff at pharmacy preparation units and staff at external suppliers. You spend quite a lot of time reviewing documents and compiling SOPs, so interacting with a wide range of people which to bring balance to the working day. Far different than in the US where most PTs are very limited as to their roles and most work mundane.

Dispensing and returns For trials that are just beginning PTs dispense the medicines   on the first two or three rounds as they are needed, so that they can check that the SOP is easy to follow.

When the bottles and boxes of dispensed clinical trials medicines are returned to the pharmacy department, they are placed in a “returns box”. The PT reviews the returned medicines on a twice-weekly basis, recording the relevant details (e.g., whether patients received all of their doses) on accountability forms.

Recent changes to legislation have resulted in even more clinical trials-related paperwork being generated in the UK. The development of databases to store and retrieve clinical trials-related information would be a step forward. However, databases will be unlikely to solve the problem of “excessive paperwork” completely because hard-copy back-ups will most likely still be needed. In the US clinical trials databases are becoming commonplace as pharmaceutical informatics is getting to be a critical field.

Versus the US:

There is far more chance for advance in the UK as a Pharmacy technician than in the US and the pay scale is far better. US Pharmacists Associations hold PTs back in the US, but with the health care cuts and cost containment coming in the US that may longer be true in the future.

The number of clinical trials performed in UK hospitals looks set to increase, bringing opportunities for pharmacy technicians to become involved. While the work of a clinical trials technician might not bring as many chances to interact directly with patients as do some other technician’s roles, it is fulfilling, requires a wide range of skills to be developed and used, and is ultimately of benefit to patients.

US Pharmacy Technician Association should use the UK as a model for continuing Pharmacy technician education in the US

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