Amy

When you think of a hospital pharmacy you might think it’s a bit like the chemist on the High Street, where pharmacists hand over medicines that have been made in a factory, far away from the hospital. The truth is that because hospital patients are all so different and often very ill, technicians like Amy are making up a lot of prescriptions from scratch. 

It’s a demanding job, where making sure every medicine is completely correct can save lives – and it took Amy a while to realise that she had what it takes to be a great Pharmacy Technician.  

After school, Amy studied childcare for two years and then started looking for a job. “My sister worked in a pharmacy and told me there was a position going so I applied and was accepted”. 

After two years of training on the job, she qualified as a Pharmacy Technician. She now works at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust as part of a small team that make a whole range of medicines, providing everything from parenteral nutrition (where people who are very ill and can’t physically eat need to get nutrients directly into a vein) to prescriptions for Crohn’s Disease. 

She also supervises other trainees when they’re making medicines as well as training new members of staff. “It’s really interesting - but you do need to be quite organised!” 

Amy takes a lot of satisfaction from her work. “At the end of the day it’s nice to go home knowing you’ve helped a patient in their journey to recovery.”