Pharmacy technician

Pharmacy technician is a job title for a pharmacy staff member "who works under the direct supervision of a licensed pharmacist, and performs many pharmacy-related functions." [1] In most cases, job duties include providing medication and other health care products to patients. Pharmacy technicians often do the routine tasks associated with preparing prescribed medication, and the manual labor component of providing drugs to patients. Most pharmacy technicians have only on-the-job training, but many employers favor those who have completed a formal training and certification process. Those meeting this certification given by the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board [2] earns the techician the professional title "CPhT" (Certified Pharmacy Technician) to 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. As of 2002, in the United States, there were no US federal (and few state) laws making it mandatory for all technicians employed 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 (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.

Pharmacy technicians work in a variety of locations. According to a 2002 United States Department of Labor report, about two-thirds worked in retail pharmacies, both independently owned or part of a drugstore, grocery store or mass retailer chain. An additional 22% of pharmacy technician jobs were in hospitals, while a small portion worked in mail-order or Internet pharmacies, clinics, pharmaceutical wholesalers, and the Federal Government. The mix in the UK is of a similar balance.

Responsibilities of a pharmacy technician differ depending on location. In many operations, they may manage assistants or do the work of pharmacy aides: answering telephone calls, handling money, stocking shelves, and computer data entry, among other odd jobs.

Pharmacy technicians who work in a hospital, nursing home or assisted-living-type facilities have additional responsibilities. In many circumstances, they will read patient charts in conjunction with a prescription, verified by both a physician and a pharmacist, before preparing and physically delivering medicine to nurses, who administer it to patients. 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. Technicians package and label each dose of medication separately, either by hand or with packaging machines. These packages are co-ordinated 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 is needed to be given to a patient. Some robots will create small containers for an individual patient that contain the medicine needed for a defined time period. Groups of these containers are then organized by pharmacy technicians and delivered to appropriate locations.

The role of the technician is likely to increase in the next few years, as more pressures are put on pharmacists to be available to consult and advise patients, rather than to simply dispense.

External links

• Pharmacy Technician Certification Board
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Pharmacy Technician Occupational Outlook Report
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain - information about registration of pharmacy technicians
• The Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK - the professional and representative organisation for pharmacy technicians working in the UK