And You Thought Working With Drugs Was Illegal!
In Texas, there’s a southern career school that offers pharmacy technician programs that may completed in as little as a couple of years. This is just one of many pharmacy technical institutes across the United States that delivers an exciting, rewarding educational program that lets you do the unthinkable–work with drugs!
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “job opportunities are expected to be good” for the pharmacy technician. For a college student following the health care industry like myself, or for anyone with their hands even mildly wet in politics, the knee-jerk response is–”Of course it is! It’s in the health care industry, the largest growing industry in the United States thanks to national health care reform!”–but don’t be so quick to act. The pharmacy technician is the not the person you think of, handling the health affairs of individuals across the United States.
They’re clerks, really. Clerks that work with drugs. You know that person that hands you your prescription and says, “The pharmacist would like to give you directions on how to use this medication?” That’s your pharmacy technician! The pharmacy technician is responsible for:
- Handling the prescription requests and refills, either via paper or electronically
- Verifying that the information on the prescription is complete and accurate (because we don’t want those drugs falling into the wrong hands or anything)
- Retrieve, count, pour, weigh, measure, and even mix these drugs/medications
- Prepare prescription labels, containers, and added cottons
It doesn’t sound very exciting. Except the drug part. Fortunately, pharmacy technician degrees are about to get a lot more dynamic, because now I’m going to go into all the rewarding aspects of this often-overlooked education and career choice:
- Amazing work environment. Say goodbye to cockroaches, obnoxious temperatures, and back-breaking labor. The pharmacy technician always works in a sterile, perfectly controlled, relaxed environment; the only kind where drugs can be handled consciencely.
- Various work places. Your work environment could be located in all kinds of facets of the health care industry, from your local grocer with a pharmacy, to a hospital, to a nursing home. This not only means more jobs available, but shorter commutes, with a pharmacy of some sort on practically every corner.
- Near-guaranteed employment. Pharmacy technicians held 285,000 jobs in 2006; back then, employment was stellar, and a certified pharmacy technician hardly worried about looking for work. With health care’s rapid expansion, things are only looking better, with an estimated 32% increase in growth up until 2016–way higher than most job projections, even in the health care sector.
Suddenly pharmacy technician programs seem like the way to go if you’re considering vocational training! Consider researching more about pharmacy technical institutes to establish your academic and professional future.
