Glossary

Assistant – See ATO 

ATO - Assistant technical officer. Member of pharmacy staff. No prior qualification is needed. Performs many different roles in a hospital pharmacy. These posts are not advertised on this website, they are usually advertised in local newspapers.

Basic Grade Pharmacist - Grade B pharmacist.

Chemotherapy - Term commonly applied to anticancer drugs, short for 'cytotoxic chemotherapy'. Often further abbreviated to 'chemo' or 'cytos'. They are usually made in the pharmacy Sterile Production Unit (SPU). 

Directorate - Hospitals are split into departments, which are often called directorates. eg Directorate of Medicine, Directorate of Pharmacy.

Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy – Optional further qualification undertaken by pharmacists, teaching greater understanding of drug use. Usually a two year course, involving half a day a week tutorial attendance. Usually has an optional 1 year extension to convert to an MSc.

Drug and Therapeutics Committee - The hospital committee who decide the hospital policies on drugs. Usual members are pharmacy managers, formulary pharmacists, consultants and nurse managers.

EDC – Emergency Duty Commitment. Payment for being on-call overnight. 

EDA - Emergency Duty Allowance (Same as EDC)

Formulary - Hospitals keep a selected range of the most cost-effective drugs. This list is the 'Hospitals Formulary' and is managed by the Formulary Pharmacist, under the guidance of the hospitals Drug and Therapeutics Committee.

Incremental date – The date that your salary goes up to the next increment on the pay scale. Usually the day you started employment.

MAU - Medical Admissions Unit. The ward to which all new medical patients (patients not needing surgery) go to for initial treatment and assessment before they go to the ward which specialises in their care.

Medicines Information Centre – The department a hospital pharmacy to which enquiries from doctors/nurses/pharmacists/patients are directed. [Medicines Information Pharmacists website]

Medicine / medical patients - Hospitals basically have 3 main types of patients. Medical, Surgical & Obstetric. 'Medical patients' are the ones whose conditions are being treated with primarily with drugs. 

MTO – Medical Technical Officer. The name of the scale of pharmacy technician salaries.

On call - Overnight pharmacy service. Every hospital is different in the level of emergency service provided. Ranging from 1 call a week to 30 calls a night. See also resident pharmacist and EDC.

Pre-registration pharmacist (Pre-reg) - Following acquiring a pharmacy degree, one years experience must be gained before qualification as a pharmacist. This can be gained in hospital pharmacy, retail pharmacy or split hospital/industry. A retail pharmacy based pre-registration year does not exclude working in hospital in future, but a hospital based pre-reg is usually preferred.

Pharmacist – Somebody with a pharmacy degree (4 year course at university), one year pre-registration experience and registered with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB).

Production – The department in a hospital pharmacy which makes all items requiring special preparation. Eg Intravenous feeding solutions (TPN), cytotoxic chemotherapy, liquid formulations of drugs etc.

Resident pharmacist – Pharmacist post (usually grade B) where the overnight on call service is provided by a pharmacist who lives on the hospital site. Usually only in the larger hospitals.

Pharmacy Technician - When qualified will have a BTECH, NVQ or equivalent in pharmaceutical sciences. Main duties include labelling and dispensing of prescriptions. Although extended roles may now involve accuracy checking and clinical ward duties. [Read more][Association of Pharmacy Technicians]

Radiopharmacy - The branch of pharmacy dealing with radioactive pharmaceuticals. (Only in certain hospitals)

SPU - Sterile Production Unit. See 'Production'.