Amanda Poole

Education and Training Specialist Pharmacy Technician

My name is Amanda and I started in Dorset Healthcare in February 2023. I am an education and training specialist technician focusing on integrated care.

What really attracted me to the role was just the fact that it’s about trying to bridge gaps between healthcare different places across Dorset. I do all sorts of things, it’s unique. It’s very hard when I applied for the job to kind of fully comprehend, especially working in an acute hospital for 11 years in the same hospital to really like see how different this job role is compared other jobs. It’s just it’s so different and it’s so new. But that’s quite exciting. It’s just looking at different ways of working. That haven’t been looked at before. I mean, it’s changed so much in such a small time. What I really like about it, for example, I can work from home, I often go to Forsten Clinic. I’ve been to Sentinel house, I’ve visited St. Anne’s, I can also go to community pharmacies as well as PCNS.

This being a new role to me, really helps with the variety across Dorset. “One thing that is mentioned a lot is that the NHS structure can be quite confusing and knowing how the PCN taught their role is and how they communicate to community pharmacies and how they communicate to key hospitals and also we all know like communications, not the best when it comes to transfer of patients. So I’m kind of really excited and interested to learn how all these, all these different places across Dorset and then gradually fill in some gaps about how it all works.”

Currently I look after 5 apprentices. As part of my role as an educational supervisor, I get involved with looking at their coursework and lot of training and teaching. To develop them into good quality, accurate technicians. I was talking to my apprentice about jobs and I showed them as massive long lists of all the different job roles that you can get into as a technician and all like in the local area. And there’s tonnes like and for so many different types of people. So you could go into like so as a technician, you could go into community pharmacies, you could work in on a busy community pharmacy you could work in a PCN, which is so different and thing I’ve done before. We can be like analysing sort of doing medicines reconciliations in the surgery you sometimes you can some venturing into clinical stuff these days until they’re doing blood pressures and things like that. You can work in an acute hospital, so really fast pace you could be on the wards. You go into management side of things. You could go into prisons now because obviously we’ve got local prisons and Dorset as well. So people were more attracted to that course to go into more like recruitment side of things. Even that I’ve met some people who’ve done like who are pharmacy technicians that specialise in it to do with environment, how it affects the environment or doing all these studies.

I’ve always worked and lived in Dorset, I Love it and I don’t want to ever leave. It’s just beautiful, it’s just a beautiful county. It’s so clean and it’s friendly and it’s safe. I mean, especially for people with children, it’s a very friendly, safe county. I can let my little one go running down the street. I don’t have to worry. Like you can walk around at night. You don’t have to worry. If you like to anything outdoors, it’s there’s so many places I live next to two nature reserves. I have masses and masses of woodland and Meadow right on my doorstep. I can just walk out and probably never, not even see a soul. Tonnes of wildlife and everything’s really accessible.

I started off as at the dispensing assistant and Superdrug and I’ve ended up now as a specialist lead technician and I haven’t had to move house or commute ridiculously long distance to do that. I’ve done it all in Dorset. So my whole training has been achieved within Dorset I’ve never had any issues finding a job or keeping a job here and I love it.