Personal Narrative: A Career As A Pharmacy Technician

I have been a component of the pharmacy team since March of 2015. Needless to say, it was nothing that I had expected to be. You will often hear the phrase, “all you have to do is fill the prescription”. Well, that is not true, it’s more to it than that. In the majority of pharmacies, there are approximately three workstations. They’re drop off, production, and pick up. At drop off, he or she will type in the prescription and bill it through the patient insurance. The production team member will then pull the medication and fill it. The prescription is then passed off to the pharmacist for quality assurance. Working in a pharmacy you have to dress professional along with a white coat. Being a pharmacy technician you have to deal with the public. A lot of people are very impatient and you have to speak clearly and be understanding. Monday is on one of the worst days out of the week. Patients have been waiting the entire week to hear back from the PA (prior authorization) to have more refills on their prescription, doctor office placing in scripts, and the oos (out of stock) products that have arrived on the truck have to be filled. During this time pick up and the drive thru are booming with customer majority of the

Often time we do refill reminders the majority of the elderly people that come to a pharmacy often forget what needs to be refilled. In our computer system we have a list of prescriptions that the patient has took over the last month when we notice that their prescription is getting low we often call or do PCQ calls which stand for per call queue. Many patients are thankful about the courtesy call because they tend to forget what the medication is called. Being a pharmacy technician I really don’t see where there is anything to be ashamed about the goal of the job is get the right prescription to the right patient in a timely