Medicines Management

Our services

The main focus of our work in community hospitals and the virtual ward is to ensure the safe and effective use of medicines for patients. Our team collaborates closely with prescribers and nursing teams on the wards, through MDT or in patients' homes, to ensure that patients are medically optimised in relation to their medicines, both during their stay and upon discharge. The team continuously counsel patients on their medicines to ensure correct usage, which also helps prevent readmission.

The team also advises on the correct ordering, use, storage, record keeping, and disposal requirements for medicines. They work closely with the Trust's Medicines Safety Officer to promptly review any medicines incidents, ensuring lessons are learned and preventing future issues through education and training.

We have a dedicated pharmacy technician who supports our Dental services and a lead pharmacist who facilitates training and medicines information support to the Children, Young People and Families service.

Our pharmacy team at the prison are based in the Healthcare department where we provide continuous care to service users. This includes medicines reviews, supply of medicines, supporting clinics, and aiding the administration of medicines.

Our new pharmacy Care Home Service has allowed us to allocate pharmacy staff to the well-established nursing care home team. They work in partnership to provide holistic review of residents, educate staff and optimise therapy, often deprescribing medicines to reduce the risk of side effects and prevent unnecessary hospital admissions.

We have led the Covid vaccination program since February 2021. In April 2025, the School Aged Immunisation Service came under our team's leadership. Our small pharmacy Vaccination Team ensures that staff work within the appropriate and current legal framework, following up-to-date policies and procedures. The team also facilitates vaccination clinics during disease outbreaks and are the cold chain experts for the Trust.

The people we see

• Community Hospital patients
• Virtual Ward patients in their own homes
• Service users within a Prison setting
• Care home residents
• Patients eligible for the Covid vaccination

Education and Training for Pharmacy Staff

We are dedicated to supporting staff in gaining the experience they need to qualify as a pharmacist or pharmacy technician. Here are some of the opportunities we offer:

Pre-Registration Pharmacy Technician

Are you interested in becoming a pharmacy technician and want to know more about the career and whether it's right for you?

Pharmacy Technicians are registered healthcare professionals with the GPhC (just like pharmacists), but they undertake their training on the job. This means they can work while they earn, with protected time to undertake their learning via an approved college. It takes two years to complete the course, and we offer split rotations to enable access to different fields of pharmacy. Core fields may include:

• Hospital pharmacy
• Community pharmacy
• Prison-based pharmacy

Additional fields, where you may spend shorter amounts of time, could include:

• Virtual ward
• Hospital or prison for those who did not take one of these for their core

Foundation Pharmacist

Currently, Shropcom does not offer standalone foundation years, but we collaborate with others to provide 13-week placements.

We have relationships with Boots, offering one placement per year based in our community hospitals. Additionally, we also work with our other partner Cornwells to offer a 4 week placement within our prison setting.

In both cases, Foundation Pharmacists will get to undertake the dispensing element, minor ailments, and using PGDs within your base, before having the opportunity to undertake clinical placements at the Trust.

All of these posts are offered via Oriel, so please look for Boots or Cornwells to locate the Foundation Year opportunities that may interest you.

Further Education

Once qualified, learning doesn't stop there. We run monthly team meetings that include education and clinical supervision. We also provide opportunities for staff to upskill and access training to become an Accredited Checking Technician or to undertake your Independent Prescriber qualification for pharmacists, in fact, almost all of our pharmacists now hold their independent prescribing qualification, which has become increasingly more important within our hospital, prison, virtual ward and care home services.

What is it like to work for Shropcom Medicines Management?

We let our team do the talking here, and here are some of the things they say they enjoy about working in the team:

Please see our Current vacancies page to view any available roles within our organisation.