Pharmacy Technician - A Great Career Opportunity

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 28th, 2010

Becoming a pharmacy technician is a great career opportunity. As a student you will need to follow the same path that an individual looking to become a pharmacist travels but only stopping short of completing your PharmD degree. A pharmacy technician serves both patients and the pharmacist. A pharmacy technician has duties that are both challenging and rewarding too.

Median hourly earnings for pharmacy technicians vary by geographical location as well as by the level of individual experience. The variance is anywhere from eight dollars hourly to sixteen dollars and fifty cents an hour.

The job outlook for pharmacy technicians is phenomenal. Any pharmaceutically based occupation will certainly be important now and also in the future. With people living longer and medicines becoming more sophisticated and numerous there is no way to go wrong with a career in medicine. Pharmacist and pharmacy technicians will always be in demand. Pharmacy technicians are more in demand due to the fact there can be as many as four technicians aiding one single pharmacist.

Pharmacy technicians have several options for workplace settings. The overall duties will not vary greatly in the field of pharmacist technicians. The variations in workplace choices add just enough spice to the career opportunities to make becoming a technician greatly appealing. Seven of the ten jobs occupied by pharmacist technicians are in retail pharmacy positions. Retail pharmacy encompasses both independently owned or chain store pharmacy settings.

Nearly two of ten pharmacy technician jobs are in hospitals. There are also miniscule proportions that belong to the obscure aspects of the pharmaceutical trade such as mail order, clinic and wholesalers.

It takes grand people skills to participate as a pharmacist technician. Technicians that are successful are alert, organized, dedicated and efficient in their work. A technician should have an eye for detail and not be easily distracted. An independent reliable nature encourages the pharmacist for which you work under to be confident you can handle all types of situations. Your work is directly related to life and death in more ways than one.

As a technician you will have to interact daily with patients, pharmacists, and various healthcare professionals. Teamwork is an important part of the successful career of any pharmacy technician as you will be working closely with pharmacy aids and pharmacists too.

As a pharmacy technician your duties will vary greatly from those of any other health care professional but will relate directly to the duties of a pharmacist. Your responsibilities are receiving prescriptions sent electronically for your patients where by, you as a technician; have to verify the information is accurate and complete. Then the prescription must be prepared.

These tasks take special attention to details. Prescriptions must be measured, counted, and weighed in some cases in order to for them to equal the dose requested by the physician for the patient involved. Technicians will label and price the prescriptions. Then the information has to be filed in an accurate and timely manner. There is no room for error in this type of career.

The appeal to become a technician is probably not based on such things as workplace environment but it is an opportunity to breathe easy knowing pharmacy technician's work in clean, well ventilated work areas. All in all the desire to become a technician has to match the things we now know as vital and important to becoming a very dedicated and highly sought after technician of pharmacy.