5 Benefits to a Career as a Pharmacy Technician
Are you looking for a job in the healthcare field that doesn’t require many years of training? Would you like to take on administrative responsibilities as well as customer service duties? Do you enjoy working directly with people? If you answered yes to these questions, a career as a pharmacy technician might be right for you.
Pharmacy technicians perform a wide variety of tasks — ranging from processing patient prescriptions to mixing medications — to assist licensed pharmacists. While exact duties can vary based on the state and the workplace environment, pharmacy technicians in general serve as liaisons between patients and pharmacists, providing customer service to the former and administrative support to the latter.
Here are the major benefits a pharmacy technician career offers:
A Growing Field
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the healthcare industry will continue to grow quickly in the next decade, outpacing the average growth for all occupations. Why is the healthcare industry growing so quickly? One main reason is due to the increasing numbers of older Americans, who generally require more healthcare services.
Between 2019 to 2029, employment in healthcare jobs is expected to increase by 15 percent — or 2.4 million jobs. More specifically, employment of pharmacy technicians is expected to grow 4 percent during this period. “Increased demand for prescription medications will lead to more demand for pharmaceutical services,” according to BLS.
Fast Training Programs
Some careers in the healthcare field require a decade or more of education and training, but a career as a pharmacy technician can be started much more quickly. In fact, the typical entry-level education for a pharmacy technician is a high school diploma or equivalent.
That said, 45 states do require that pharmacy technicians complete a training program. These programs vary in length, from as little as four months for a certificate or diploma program or as much as two or more years for an associate degree program. Many of these programs can be completed online at a time most convenient for you.
A Variety of Work Environments
Pharmacy technicians have the benefit of being able to work in many different environments. Some might choose to work in a larger hospital setting, others at small drug stores. Some might like being at a neighborhood store with just a single pharmacist, while others might elect to work at a 24-hour supermarket that may offer more flexible or unconventional hours.
This allows for a lot of choice in the type of workplace you can select from, should you learn you prefer one setting to another. If your favorite aspect of being a pharmacy technician is interacting with people face-to-face, you might choose to work at a pharmacy where you get to spend the bulk of your time helping customers. If you excel at paperwork, you might look for a position that allows you to focus primarily on managing insurance claims. Because pharmacy technicians can work in so many different settings, becoming one gives you many opportunities to find a position that best fits your skills and interests.
Wide Range of Duties
If the idea of doing the exact same thing over and over every day bores you, you need not fear that from a pharmacy technician career. In this role, you’re expected to perform a wide variety of different tasks. Each day is likely to be quite different, as the needs of the patients that come into your workplace will be varied.
For example, a pharmacy technician might spend a chunk of the workday assisting people who walk into the pharmacy, whether it’s filling their prescriptions or helping them locate nonprescription medicine on the shelves. But other hours might be spent inventorying the medication supply, preparing intravenous medications, or managing insurance claims in the back office.
In some cases, pharmacy technicians are tasked with delivering life-saving medications to patients, mixing medications at compounding pharmacies, or requesting prescription confirmations or refill authorizations from doctors and medical facilities. As a pharmacy technician, you’ll likely pick up a diverse set of both customer service and administrative skills as you perform many different tasks.
The Opportunity to Help People
Many of us want to make a positive difference in our communities and the world at large — and a career as a pharmacy technician allows you to do just that. Making sure people receive the right medication in the right dosage at the right time is invaluable work, and as a pharmacy technician, you will play an important role in this process every day.
Of course, any career in healthcare should be protected by quality insurance. Pharmacy techs should have their own policy, separate from their employer. At NOW insurance, we offer simple, fast, and affordable professional liability insurance trusted by a variety of medical professionals. Find out more about the professional and general liability insurance we offer for pharmacy technicians, and get an instant quote from our digital application to get started.
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