Pharmacy Technician

A Pharmacy Technician works under the close supervision of a licensed Pharmacist, assisting them with their duties and making their job easier. Most of your time as a Pharmacy Technician will be spent taking, verifying, processing, and filling prescriptions. In fact, your job is very similar to that of a Pharmacist. The main difference is that, as a Pharmacy Technician, you don’t answer medical questions from patients.

When you aren’t preparing prescriptions you might take payments, order supplies, handle health insurance claims, or organize stock so older medications get used first. Sometimes you will follow up with prescribing Doctors when their prescriptions aren’t legible. (Doctors that write like chickens scratch? Unheard of!). All of these jobs help keep the pharmacy running smooth and error free.

One of your most important duties, the one that may someday save a life, is the double-checking procedure that is required before dispensing any medications. While no one will really know it (because you kept the worst from happening) you can go home every day knowing you have at the least helped people on their road to recovery, and at the most saved a life.

Pharmacy Technicians, like most of the medical field, are in high demand. You might work in a retail pharmacy such as Walgreens or CVS, or in a medical environment, like a hospital or nursing home. If you’re in retail, you’ll deal with customers, and managing inventory, and submitting billing. In a patient care facility you’re slightly more hands on, and may be responsible for gathering prescriptions for the Nurse to administer or checking medical records (with the Pharmacist’s supervision) to help ensure that the patient’s are getting the proper dosage at the proper times.