Career Opportunities And Roles Of Pharmacy Technicians

Roles Of Pharmacy Technician

Pharmacy technicians are like assistants to the pharmacist in their day-to-day activities. They are health care workers who work under the supervision of a pharmacist and performs pharmacy related functions. They are not very common in Nigeria but are growing as the years goes by. The only school of health technologies and few other health related institutions have the licence to run the program.

To be a certified pharmacy technician, it is mandatory to acquire knowledge in a school approved by Pharmaceutical Council Of Nigeria (P.C.N) for three years. This provides an array of opportunities for such graduates. To start with, such ones can apply for direct entry to study pharmacy in an approved university by PCN. Aside from that, here is the list of opportunities opened to pharmacy technicians in Nigeria.
Read Also: The Various Roles Pharmacist Play In Their Sectors In Nigeria

Careers Opportunity For Pharmacy Technician In Nigeria

Community Pharmacy: Community pharmacy is that pharmacy store that are positioned at various locations across Nigeria that sell and dispense medication prescriptions. Most of them require the services of a technician to reduce the work stress. What pharmacy technicians do include keep customer’s prescription data, filling and labelling prescription, managing inventory, answering the phone call and distributing medications to customers.

Hospital Pharmacy: They, in addition to their other many duties, dispense drugs to the patient after doctors’ prescription. They require the service of pharmacy technicians as it helps lessen their workload. Their duties include reading prescription orders and interpret them, compound medications, perform pharmacy calculations, medications reconciliations and in some cases take medications to patients within the hospital.

Industrial Pharmacy: They are responsible for drug development and design with drug marketing. Pharmacy technicians working for them must learn how to coordinate drug information request, contribute to research on drug development and design, assist in literature searches, writing drug information documents and other quality assurance processes.

Manage Care: Health insurance companies can hardly do without the services of a technician with sound knowledge of talking to customers about services render and how it will benefit them. They explain the services of their host companies to the customer in such a manner that is devoid of medical jargon unlike the pharmacist in charge. They are also in charge of reviewing prior authorization request and claim adjudication, providing ongoing education and training to physicians’ offices.

Government Agency: These agencies have a lot of responsibilities which technicians can contribute their quarter such as receiving and reviewing prescriptions, inventory managements of drug products and pharmaceuticals supply.

Academia: Teaching and lecturing are not a gift for all but, as for technicians who have a passion for it and have attained the academic qualification requirements for achieving it, it is a major source of income for many. They breed new sets of technicians exposing them to a new advancement in the field, which helps to build the future of the course.

There are several other opportunities for technicians, which are not very common in Nigeria such as

• Nuclear Pharmacy
• Poison control
• Home infusion

Read Also: Things To Expect When You Visit A Doctor For Medical Diagnosis

Duties Of A Pharmacy Technician

In any sector they found themselves, pharmacy technicians have the following duties to perform to patients, customers, pharmacist, and other health care staffs.

1. They are required to collect information needed to fill a prescription from customers or health professionals.
2. They calculate the correct amount of medications in the prescription while measuring it out to the best of their ability.
3. Prescriptions ought to be packaged and labelled appropriately by technicians.
4. They are the eye of any pharmacist by alerting them to changes such as shortages of medications and supply.
5. Access payments for subscriptions and process insurance claims.
6. They handle computer in the pharmacy and activities include entering customers or patients’ information including any prescription taken into the computer system.
7. Answer phone calls coming to the establishment.
8. Arrange when customers/patients can speak to a pharmacist when need be.

Skills Required To Be Successful Pharmacy Technician

• Strong attention to details as it relates to the majority of their daily task.
• Involves accurate measurement, dosing, and dispensing medication prescriptions according to very specific orders.
• Communication skills that involve written and non-written (verbal and non-verbal) skills to communicate effectively with patients, customers, pharmacist and other health care workers or staff.
• Strong organisation skills such as schedule appointments with the pharmacist when it is very convenient for him and good timing.
• Ability to learn at a fast pace as pharmacy technician job changes with time involving drug studies, review, pharmaceutical literature or procedure reports about different subscription medications and dispensing activities.

Note: A quality pharmacy technician learns something every day.

Share On Social Media With Family And Friends To Show You Care!