From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
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. 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.
