Ionix Pharmacies

Pharmacy Technician- a Career Option

Becoming a pharmacy technician can be a rewarding career choice. This field has good career prospects, monetary benefits and rewards. Pharmacy technicians assist licensed pharmacists in providing health care products and medications to patients. They routinely prepare prescribed medicines for the patients; for example, counting the tablets and fixing labels to bottles. The pharmacy technician refers questions regarding drug information, prescriptions or health matters to the pharmacist.

Certification

A National Pharmacy Technician Certification Examination, conducted by the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board, which is held at various examination centers at a national level, has to be passed in order to become a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT). Candidates are required have a high school diploma/GED, and must not have any record of felony. Once qualified, pharmacy technicians need to be recertified every two years.

The eligibility criteria for recertification is to have completed twenty contact hours of pharmacy related topics, within the two-year certification period. Attending lectures, college course work and on-the-job training are all considered for awarding contact hours. It is mandatory to have a minimum of one contact hour in pharmacy law. Flexibility allows contact hours to be earned from different sources. Up to ten contact hours can be earned by working under the direct supervision of a pharmacist.

Other sources are attending pharmacy colleges, belonging to pharmacy associations, and pharmacy technician training programs. However, presently, there is no federal requirement for formal training and certification of a pharmacy technician, although there may be some states that do have such a requirement. Many employers provide on-the-job training to people and recruit them as pharmacy technicians.

As reliance on pharmacy technicians continues to grow, more states and employers require pharmacy technicians to be formally educated and certified. Many employers offer to reimburse the cost of the examination as an incentive. Formal education programs are offered by the military and some hospitals. Proprietary schools, community colleges and vocational or technical colleges also offer education programs.

Place and Nature of Work

Pharmacy technicians generally work in hospitals, general medical and surgical stores, health and personal care stores, and retail or mail order pharmacies. Their job responsibilities differ accordingly, and are dependent on applicable laws and other regulatory mandates of the state. They receive prescriptions in writing and requests from patients for prescription refills. A doctor’s office may also send a prescription electronically.

The pharmacy technician has to verify the information in the prescription, for completeness and accuracy. The preparation of the prescription requires the pharmacy technician to retrieve, count, pour, measure, weigh and occasionally mix the required medication. They have to select the type of prescription container, and create and fix the labels on it. After it is filled, they price the prescription and file it. The pharmacist then checks this before it is given to the patient. Pharmacy technicians may be required to prepare insurance claim forms, maintain patient profiles, and take an inventory of over-the-counter prescription medications.

They must be aware of the latest medicines and their availability. At times, they also need to advise the patient about diet and health requirements. According to available records for 2004, pharmacy technicians earned median hourly wages of $11.37. The highest figure was $16.61 and the lowest was $7.96.

A career as a pharmacy technician can be pursued even without formal certification in most states, and allows working in clean, organized work areas. It offers a reasonably good salary and benefit package.



By: Tony Jacowski

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Choosing the job you want is not like choosing what course to take in college or what dish you want to be served. It’s definitely much harder. At least in college, you only need to sacrifice four to five years of your life, unless you’re inclined to take it further and get a master’s degree. But choosing the right place of employment can potentially affect you for a lifetime so one must choose wisely before making a decision.

In this article, we are going to explore the job description, specifications and qualifications needed to become a pharmacy technician.

The first question one should ask is… what is a pharmacy technician and what does a pharmacy technician do? First of all, a pharmacy technician is not a pharmacist. A pharmacist must have a degree in pharmacy. On the other hand, a pharmacy technician isn’t burdened with the same requirements and responsibilities.

In a nutshell, a pharmacy technician is an assistant pharmacist but has job responsibilities one step higher than that of a pharmacist aide.

Let’s break down the official definition of pharmacy technicians’ job title into two parts. The pharmacist or pharmacy aspect of the job requires you to have a working knowledge of drugs and medicine. A pharmacy technician must also know the difference between cough tablets and aspirin and have the knowledge to navigate the fine line between headache pills and tablets to help relieve PMS and they must also be able to handle the basic operations of a pharmacy if the pharmacist is on vacation or nowhere to be found.

The technical aspect of the job also requires the pharmacy technician to have exemplary organizational skills and they may be also be required to label medicine bottles and categorize them under the correct name or group – the 100 mg label must go on the 100 mg bottle. Just one error, one tiny oversight could result in very negative consequences for a patient.

Other tasks include being able to work under pressure because there will be days that the drugstore or pharmacy where you work has people lined up to get their prescriptions filled.

As a pharmacy technician, you will also be responsible for supplying aid to licensed pharmacists as they provide patients with medication and other healthcare products. A well trained, competent pharmacy technician must therefore be knowledgeable enough to suggest alternative brands for off the counter medication but alternatives for prescribed medication is solely the responsibility of licensed pharmacists.

A pharmacy technician is sometimes required to perform certain manual tasks like labeling bottles, counting pills or doing inventory. In some areas of the country, the tasks of a pharmacy technician and a pharmacist aide overlap so don’t be surprised if on occasion, you end up being asked to complete tasks meant for the latter. This could include acting as a cashier, answering phone inquiries, stocking shelves and other clerical duties. While there are several pharmacy technician duties that a pharmacist aide can never perform, there are few pharmacist aide tasks that a pharmacy technician cannot perform.

The job responsibilities of a pharmacy technician can vary depending on the type of business the pharmacy they work at is located in. For example, a pharmacy technician is usually assigned to handle orders sent through courier or even email in a mail order pharmacy and upon verification that the order is correctly and properly filled up, the pharmacist technician is then required to do the actual counting, weighing and mixing of the prescription.

On the other hand, in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and so forth a pharmacy technician may have the added responsibilities of record filing and the updating of patient files – especially those related a patient’s medication.

If the allure of a pharmacy technician career appeals to you, check out the links below.



By: Scott Knutson

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A pharmacy technician is a pharmacy staff member who works under the direct supervision of a licensed pharmacist and performs many pharmacy-related functions. Some of the job duties include providing medication and other health care products to patients, performing routine tasks associated with preparing prescribed medication and many do the manual labor component of providing drugs to patients.

In the past, most pharmacy technicians had only on-the-job training but today, many employers favor those who have completed a formal training and certification process. The Pharmacy Technician Certification Board oversees the certification process and those pharmacy technician wannabes that earn certification receive the professional title Certified Pharmacy Technician or CPHT follow their name. This type of training program is usually offered by the military, some hospitals, proprietary schools, vocational or technical colleges, and community colleges. Even as little as 4 or 5 years ago there were no US federal (and few state) laws making it mandatory for pharmacy technicians to meet this qualifying standard. However, some non-federal jurisdictions do require licensing such as the state of Virginia.

In the United Kingdom and many other countries, there are accredited programs which pharmacy technicians must complete. In the UK this is composed of an on the job qualification, known as an NVQ level 3 and a theory based qualification (BTEC) usually completed on day-release at college or by correspondence course. Within the next few years (probably around 2008) “pharmacy technician” will become a protected job title in the UK and only those with both qualifications will be allowed to use this title by law.

According to a United States Department of Labor report a few years ago, about two-thirds of pharmacy technicians worked in retail pharmacies, both independently owned or part of a drugstore, grocery store or mass retailer chain. Another 22% were employed in hospitals, while a small portion worked in mail-order or Internet pharmacies, clinics, pharmaceutical wholesalers, or for the Federal Government. The balance in the UK is of a similar.

Responsibilities of a pharmacy technician differ depending on location. Although virtually all report directly the supervising pharmacist, in some operations, they may also have some supervisory responsibilities themselves by managing assistants and / or pharmacy aides. Other responsibilities include answering telephone calls, handling money, stocking shelves and computer data entry.

Pharmacy technicians who work in hospitals, nursing homes or assisted-living-type facilities may have additional responsibilities like reading patient charts in conjunction with prescriptions. After approval from the attending physician or pharmacist they would then deliver the medicine to a nurse, who in turn, administers it to the patient.

Pharmacy technicians may also be responsible for managing robotic organizational systems that stock and organize 24-hour supplies of medicine for every patient in a health care facility. They may also package and label each dose of medication separately, either by hand or with packaging machines. These packages are then coordinated with a computer using bar codes and make it possible to automate pharmacy-side drug delivery: a package labeled by name, dose and expiration is cataloged in a computer, before being placed on a shelf controlled by a robotic arm until it’s needed by a patient. Some robotic systems can even dispense medications for individual patients. These individual containers are then organized and delivered by a pharmacy technician.

The role of the technician is likely to increase in the next few years, due to aging population and as more pressures is put on pharmacists to spend more time consulting and advising patients, rather than to simply dispense prescriptions.

If the allure of a pharmacy technician career appeals to you, check out the links below.



By: Scott Knutson

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Pharmacy technicians are the front-end persons you see at pharmacies. It is they who actually do the routine work of dispensing medicines – receiving prescriptions, checking for their completeness, retrieving the medication, counting, weighing or otherwise measuring it, preparing the prescription labels, selecting suitable container and labeling it. The filled prescription is then priced and filed, and checked by a pharmacist before being given to the patient.

In effect, pharmacy technician jobs involve helping the pharmacists with the routine tasks of filling prescriptions. The job requires training and certification to understand prescriptions, check their accuracy and completeness, select the right medicines and fill the order attending to all the correct formalities. Technicians might receive requests from patients or directly from doctors. They must be able to decipher doctors’ handwriting and check that the prescription makes sense.

Pharmacy technician jobs are thus more than merely filling tablets and capsules into packets. Technicians might even be required to mix the medication. Where they have any doubts or questions, they must refer these to the pharmacist. That means they must know when and how to ask the right questions!

Other Technical Pharmacy Routines

In addition to filling prescriptions, drug dispensing also involves things like:

Creating and maintaining patient profiles

Preparing insurance claim forms

Reading patient charts at hospitals, preparing and delivering the medicines to the patients (after verification by a pharmacist)

Organizing the medication delivery to avoid mistakes (by assembling a 24 hour supply of medicines for each patient, packaging and labeling each dose separately in the patient’s medicine cabinet), and getting the packages checked by the pharmacist



It is typically the pharmacy technician’s job to stock the prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the pharmacy shelves, and to take inventory periodically. Pharmacy aides will help the technician in these and other routines such as keeping accounts, answering phones and handling money.

Becoming a Pharmacy Technician

As would be clear from the above, the pharmacy technician job require less drug-related knowledge than is needed for a pharmacist but much more knowledge than what a layperson has.

You have to become a certified pharmacy technician by passing an exam to be eligible for a pharmacy technician job. Technician training gives the trainees the skills and knowledge needed to perform the kind of work discussed above.

After completing training, you would typically have to get a state license to work as pharmacy technician. Pharmacy technicians have also to attend specified hours of continuing education through contact classes to be eligible for re-certification every two years.

Pharmacy Technician Job Prospects

A growing and older population, who typically use more medication, means that there will be an increasing demand for pharmacy technicians. New drug discoveries, for treating more and more conditions, also mean greater need for trained technicians able to fill prescriptions correctly.

Wherever possible, employers will prefer to employ the less expensive pharmacy technician than a highly trained (and consequently expensive) pharmacist.

Pharmacy technician jobs are estimated to grow faster than most categories of jobs.



By: Stefan Kyriakides

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