Discussion on a news article stating our lack of consistency in pharmacy technician training

I was perusing through some pharmacy news about pharmacy errors and found an article from a couple of years ago about a bad error made by a pharmacy technician. The error was related to simply entering the wrong dose of a medication in the system (10 mg versus the prescribed 1 mg of a blood thinner, the article does not say, but this is most likely warfarin). The pharmacist, who is ultimately responsible, did not catch the error. Walgreen’s had to pay $25.8 million in a settlement since the patient had a debilitating stroke as a result. What I found interesting is that the article by ABC news focused on the fact that the pharmacy technician was a teenager and had no more training than a fast food employee.

From my perspective, there are positives and negatives to this article. Some negatives are that they focused on the technician when the pharmacist is the responsible person, the second is that none of the safety features in place in this store were able to prevent the error. I believe that pharmacies have gotten better at catching errors, but they can still happen. I also feel very bad for the pharmacy technician. She lived in a state that did not require much at the time to become a pharmacy technician. The positives are the fact that it was brought to light that we have so much inconsistency in state by state requirements for becoming a pharmacy technician. This happened in the state of Florida, in 2011 the state increased it’s requirements to become a pharmacy technician. This included ASHP approved pharmacy technician training courses.

What does this mean for you? Well, this article is 2 years old. But, many states still require next to nothing to become a pharmacy technician. Don’t take the chance by doing next to nothing. At minimum, get nationally certified. To do this requires some studying that will provide you with some level of understanding and training. Ideally, find a training program that fits your budget and go through the course. If possible, try and complete an externship. It will provide you a nice training environment where you are an extra person and you can do things slower and learn from a seasoned pharmacy technician and pharmacist.

I worried a little about sharing this article. I thought it might scare some people. As a pharmacy director, I want you to have some degree of fear. Taking care of patients is a serious job that requires a level of professionalism and attention to your job that you do not need in a fast food restaurant. If you do not gain that healthy level of respect, then you could cause an error that results in harming a patient.

Recent Q&A by email worth Sharing

Here is a recent question I received that had some good discussion: Hello Rob, I live in CA and I was wondering what you think the outlook is for pharmacy tech. I hear that the outlook is good but when I look at the job boards, I see nothing in my area at all. I am thinking of going to school for pharmacy tech or dental assistant. I am having a tough time deciding. On my resume I have prior experience about 6 years ago being an assistant manager for two retail stores and I also have waitress experience, will that help me get a job at all? In order to pay bills, I am hoping to get around 14-15 an hour when I finish school. Do you think that is possible? I am doing the schooling through a regional occupational program through the city (R.O.P) and it is accredited. I think this will be a better option then going to a community college because they actually help you get a job. They help with your resume and that sort of stuff. I will also have my Associate’s of science from the local community college by the time I am done with the schooling. The only other deciding factor is that I do have a medical condition. I am wondering about working late hours as a pharmacy tech, I don’t think I could do it. I think it would be too hard on my body. Please help and thank you for your opinion!

Answer: Prior experience does help you get a job, especially when it is in management. At least I like to believe that the person will be a better employee having been in charge of employees in the past. How much your employer will give you for experience pay based on that is a little less standard. My company only gives experience for very related positions, in this case pharmacy experience. For the $14-15/hour, it is possible but not likely. At my hospital pharmacy you could get there in 6 months, but it really depends on your companies set up. My techs start at about $11.25/hr. As soon as they are hired they can take the tech Level I exam and if they pass they get a 10% pay increase. They can then study for the Tech Level II exam, and if they pass they get another 10% raise. So a new tech could be at $13.61 in about 6 months. Annual increases have typically been 3%, so this person would be at $14.02 in about a year (depends when in the year they start relative to raises.

As for the medical condition. You do need to take care of yourself, but the better paying jobs are in hospital. Some retail positions can pay well, but typically when you get into supervisor duties or lead tech duties. However, retail pharmacies have better hours (except for your 24 hour ones of course). I do think hospital pharmacy will be less stress on you compared to retail. In the end, you need to make this decision on what is best for you.

For jobs, have you tried bestjobsearchwebsite.com? If you search for pharmacy technician and your zip-code, you should get a pretty good list of jobs near you. If you do not get much, then you may live in a saturated job market.

Response: Thank you so much for your advice, that helped a lot! I looked at the job board you gave me and saw a lot more jobs then monster.com. I decided I am going to do the pharmacy tech program and still continue some classes at the local JC. Thank you for you help again!

Pharmacy Technician Contract with No Compete Clause

I have to share a new experience I had today at the pharmacy. For those that are new to the site, I am a pharmacy director at a 400 bed hospital. We recently hired a pharmacy technician at our inpatient pharmacy. I received a call from her previous boss today. This boss is calling to let me know that my new pharmacy technician signed a no compete clause that said she would not work for a competing compounding pharmacy.

So far so good right. I inquire as to the pharmacy she worked at . . . it is a vet pharmacy. Not vet as in war veterans, but vet as in animals. My pharmacy takes care of humans, as in a regular hospital for HUMANS. I explain this to the lady, and she said that it does not matter, we compound drugs, so it is part of the contract. I ask her what her intentions are and her expectations of me. She says that I need to fire the pharmacy technician.

This is one of those WTH moments (What The Heck, you can substitute other words if you must, I’ll try to keep it PG). I check with my human resources department, and this is new for them too. We think the whole compete clause is unwarranted for this situation and have decided to do nothing about it. In fact, if there even is this compete clause in place, it is between the pharmacy technician and the previous employer (the vet pharmacy). For the record, compete clauses are for like businesses and more particularly used to tell someone they cannot start their own similar business. My wife is also a pharmacist and works for a long-term care pharmacy. They were asked to sign no compete clauses stating that they would not start their own long-term care pharmacy within two years after employment. this makes sense, a pharmacist builds relationships with a nursing home or many homes and could potentially steal the homes and start their own pharmacy. I do not see how this applies to an animal vet pharmacy in relation to a human hospital pharmacy, it is just nutty.

I have a point here. If you are entering employment with a pharmacy (or anywhere for that matter). Pay attention to these types of agreements. Even invalid ones like this one can cause problems. I would counsel people to stay away from this lady and her pharmacy, something isn’t right. So, make sure you read the stuff you sign when you obtain a job. It could really hinder your chances for future employment at other pharmacies. Fortunately, this is the first time I have heard of this for a pharmacy technician and my guess is that it is not common at all. I still wanted to share the story with you and just in case, provide you with some information in the event you run into a similar situation. Aloha -Rob

If you are considering Career Step’s Pharmacy Technician program, do it before the end of March.

I just received an email yesterday from Career Step that they are raising tuition in April. They did not say by how much, when they do I will add it to the Career Step page. In addition, March has up to 10% off tuition (for up front payment, or 5% off if you are doing the payment plan). Therefore, if you are thinking about doing this program, I would consider signing up now in order to save some money. Here is the direct link to the program: Career Step.

As for me, my hospital pharmacy just had our every three year Joint Commission survey. This survey has a lot of pharmacy involvement, and I need a lot of help from my pharmacy technicians in making sure our medication storage and medication management is compliant with regulations. If you work or are externing in a hospital, this is where monthly inspections of all areas where medications are stored is so very important. We look for expired medications, multi-dose vials that are labeled with beyond use dates, look-alike/sound-alike medications labeled and stored separately, and various other critical medication storage requirements. Every hospital should have a medication unit inspection list, if your does not have one, send me an email (use contact tab above) and I will send you an example.

I also just got back from a 340B conference. 340B is a program that certain hospitals and clinics qualify for based on their percentage of Medicaid patients (it is a little bit more complicated than that, but that is pretty close). If you qualify, you are allowed to buy certain outpatient drugs at a discount, so you can offset the costs of the lower paying patients, you should also increase and expand charity care services. There is a ton of regulation around it, and starting to become a very hot topic. My database pharmacy technician and my pharmacy technician buyer are the two staff I have trained on 340B. For more information on 340B, go to 340BProgram.org. Definitely a great area to consider learning to enhance your resume for hospital work. The picture above is from the conference at the Del Coronado on Coronado Island in San Diego.

A great question I received via email that is worth sharing!

Hi Rob,

I just wanted to take a minute to say thanks for writing this site/blog. I was browsing a local university course listing and saw the pharm tech course and then did some digging and found your site. There’s SO much info and details, I feel so overwhelmed and have a TON of questions. I value sites like yours because its basically, what you see is what you get.

Quick Background:
I’m currently in the IT field and although making decent money, I’m looking to switch careers.. Money isn’t everything, but as with most people, I need to see if this career change will benefit me emotionally as well as financially before making this commitment, (its quite terrifying actually). Doing a search on salary, I see it was around 27k. Without knowing exactly what you make, but with your experience, is it achievable to double that amount?

Are you open to questions? If I decided that perhaps I wanted to pursue a career as a pharmacist, what additional education would I need?

Rob, Thank you again. I know you must get hundreds of emails so I appreciate the time.

-T

Welcome to 2012 and the new year!!!

I hope the holidays have been good to you and you are already back to work, school, or being productive somewhere in your pharmacy technician training. In this article, we will cover updates to Pharmacy Technician HQ and a recent question asked by email.

As for me, I have been busy at work. We have a ton of projects going on that I find pretty fun. We are rolling out a new temperature monitoring system (TempTrak if you are curious, a pretty cool product for wireless refrigerator monitoring), POMS (a pharmacy orders management system), and reconstruction of about one third of our pharmacy (okay, this is not fun, and I am sure some of my technicians can’t wait to get our window and dispensing drawer back in use). A couple buddies of mine (also pharmacists) are also looking at opening an outpatient pharmacy. I do plan on staying on at my hospital as the director of pharmacy for at least 5 to 7 years, but I am excited about being a part of a pharmacy business outside of my company I currently work for. This will also lead to more opportunity to get a pharmacy technician course created down the road. Okay enough about my happenings.

I receive a fair amount of questions about moving states. These are often sent by email and are therefore not on any of the comments on the site. I add some of the email questions, but only if they have widespread applicability. A general rule of thumb when obtaining your pharmacy technician registration or license in one state is to think about the possibilities of you moving to a different state. If you are or think you are, research that state as well. You do not want to be caught in a situation where you are working as a pharmacy technician in one state, but cannot become one in a state you move to. One thing to look at is reciprocity, or one state accepting your registration in one state as proof that you have experience enough to not require formal education. Some states will accept work experience if you have worked a predefined amount of hours (I often see 2000 hours as the requirement). In many states national certification is required regardless, so just get it.

To end, it is a new year. If you have been on the fence about a career change or what you want to do with your life. The worst possible decision is no decision at all. Making a choice and completing whatever it takes to reach your goal is what is important. If your goal is a college degree, then enroll in college and do it. If your goal is to work in a pharmacy, then do whatever your state requires and make it happen. Even if you change your mind later, the experience you gain is worth it, and very few things are so permanent that you cannot change course later. If you have read all the articles on this site, you will remember an article titled “GOYA.” It is time to GOYA! Best of luck in all your endeavors in 2012. -Rob

One thing you should not do at work!

What I am about to share is not a new concept. I have mentioned it before when I discuss things you should and should not do when externing (you can go back and read that article here). So what is it . . . constantly being on your smart phone (or cell phone). Picture yourself as a patient in a hospital, or visiting a family member in a hospital. What message do you get when you see hospital employees walking around texting and talking on their cell phones? It looks very unprofessional and as if you have so many better things to be doing than be at work. In today’s competitive healthcare environment, we cannot afford to have our staff give any perceptions of lack of caring or ambivalence to patient care. We need to walk the halls looking for opportunities to help and greet our patients and families. We need to be about work when at work. You have the rest of your day and your lunch break to text and talk to friends and family. If you have an emergency that cannot wait, then let your supervisor know and take a 10 or 15 minute break to deal with it.

From my perspective, this is a total deal breaker for someone trying to get a job, and something that will hurt staff who are trying to get a better job. In fact, it will even lead to disciplinary action and possible loss of a job. So think about it, if it were your company, how would you want your staff to act? If you were the patient, what would give you more assurance that the staff care about what they do?

I share these ideas with you so that you can be a better technician, get the job you want, and be an effective member of a team. I believe pharmacy can be very rewarding, I felt this way as a tech for over 8 years. Take your career/job seriously, and it will be rewarding for you too.

Yahoo recently released two articles that has a career as a Pharmacy Technician listed in the top list

The first article talks about healthcare being the hottest field right now. In fact, it is one of the few areas adding jobs right now. The list has pharmacy technician sitting at number three, which isn’t too shabby. Here is a link to that article: “What’s the Hottest Career Field? Health Care.”

The second article discusses how to switch careers in less than one year. This article is not just about healthcare jobs, rather the top jobs you can obtain for less than a year of training. The author lists 8 different jobs and pharmacy technician is one of them. Pretty cool stuff. Here is a link to this article: “One Year Career Plans.”

Epocrates Rx is the best free App for a pharmacy technician

There are many apps out there that you can get for free or for a couple of dollars. One of the first ones to come out was Epocrates. I remember back in the day (about 12 years ago), pharmacy staff were running around with these clunky Palm Pilots (I have owned about 3 or 4 different ones). Epocrates was one of the first ones to come out with a free version, and of course a more advanced version for a price. I have to tell you, I think the free version is pretty darn good (for a free product). I have a Blackberry and an iPod Touch (my company allowed iPhones after I got my last Blackberry, and now I am stuck with it until my next contract period . . . 6 months). I know you will not cry for me, and I can appreciate that. What does the free app have: General generic and brand drug information and nice summaries of mechanism of action and basic need to know about the medication. It also has a nice pill identifier, drug interactions checker, and assortment of medical calculators. I also picked this because it is for all mobile devices. Go to epocrates.com to see for your self.