Pharmacy Tech Careers
You might be wondering what types of pharmacy tech careers are out there in the real world? Well, as I mentioned on the homepage, pharmacy is a diverse field and there are many pharmacy tech careers to choose from. I briefly discussed the most common ones which included retail, hospital, mail order, home health care, mail order, long term care and teaching. Keep in mind there are other pharmacy tech careers as well besides the ones listed here but these are the most common settings. I’ll list the settings below and expand on them a little bit.
Note: these are general descriptions of work environments, specific duties are determined by each individual company.
Retail
In case you’re new to pharmacy, I’ll briefly describe what it means when someone says “I work in a retail pharmacy”. Retail pharmacy is the same as a retail store that caters to customers and has a physical location where customers come in for their pharmacy needs. Examples include your corner drugstore, a supermarket drug store or a mom and pop drugstore down the street.
So, you might be wondering what pharmacy techs do in a retail setting?
Pharmacy tech job descriptions may vary depending on the company you work for, but some of the most common duties are answering telephone calls, calling customers regarding their medications to remind them of refills, managing the front end of the pharmacy, assisting the pharmacist in filling prescriptions and compounding medications if needed, inventory control, placing drug orders and performing other duties as delegated by the Pharmacist. This setting is the easiest to get a job in.
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Hospital
Hospital pharmacy is very different than retail if it is inpatient, in this setting you are in a closed environment which means you are not directly dealing with patients as you would in retail. Note: there are also outpatient hospital pharmacies which are similar to retail except that they’re located within a hospital. Inpatient pharmacy tech duties may vary by hospital and may include inventory control, unit dose preparation (drug packaged as a single dose), pyxis machine refills (a machine on nursing floors that is loaded with medications by pharmacy techs so that nurses can have immediate access to medications without having to wait for pharmacy to send it up to the floor), filling prescription orders, answering calls from nurses and doctor’s, returning calls, generating reports, compounding medications as needed and delivering medications as needed to the nursing floors. In a hospital setting there may be as few as 2 or as many as 15 techs working at a time depending on the size of the hospital and each tech will have assigned duties on a rotating basis.
Mail order
Mail order pharmacy is also a closed environment setting, in this setting you would be responsible for packaging drugs in bulk so they can be shipped via mail to the patient, usually for 3 months' supply at a time for each medication they’re on. Again, duties may vary by company.
Home health
Home health is also a closed environment setting, here you are packaging enough medication for the patient to last about a week, medications are shipped to the patient to their home where a nurse or caregiver administers it to them if they are unable or unwilling to do it themselves. The difference is that unlike mail order you are also sending the patient the medical supplies (e.g. alcohol swabs, gauze, cotton buds, syringes etc.) they would need in addition to their medications.
Long term care (LTC)
Similar to mail order except that medications may be sent to patients to last anywhere from a week to a month depending on the type of medication it is.
Compounding
Compounding pharmacies specialize in making custom medications that are not available commercially and are made to order based on a doctor’s prescription. These pharmacies specialize in compounding medications for certain diseases and/or conditions e.g. menopause medications.
Teaching
This setting is for those that love to teach and pass on their knowledge and experience e.g. this website :) positions may be available with schools or exam preparation programs that specialize in pharmacy tech training, or it could be with the company you work for where you could be training new employees in pharmacy operations or the pharmacy computer system.
Sidebar:
****Some techs I know have also gone on to specialize in pyxis machine installation and sales or pyxis tech support. Look under hospital above to find out what a pyxis machine is?****
As you can see, the settings are diverse and unique and the first step towards this rewarding career is training and then certification.
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