r/PharmacyTechnician

So I’m a retail Pharmacy Technician. Right now, in my company, they’re pushing for us to do the flu shots even though from what I understand, clinically we shouldn’t start until September. Mind you, my pharmacy is down to 5 techs, and we need at least 4 on the weekdays, and 3 on the weekends to have a decent day. We’ve only been having 3-4 on weekdays and 2 on weekends as of late. I can barely get medications out to patients, but you want me to lose a technician/Pharmacist for 5-10 minutes PER PATIENT, and still get everything done? But that’s apart from the main issue. My issue right now is, my district is being told to basically do what I feel like is profiling patients for vaccines. Nothing in the system says that the patient is due for it, but we will ask something like “do you remember the last time you got your tetanus vaccine?” Knowing good and well that they won’t remember something like that. Depending on the age, they tell us to ask about Shingles, HEP-B, and maybe even HPV. It makes me uncomfortable because I’ve been doing this going on 4 years and we’ve NEVER pushed HEP-B this much.So I’m asking, is this something I should bring up to the Board of pharmacy in my state, or is it even worth it? I’m so fucking tired and we haven’t even started flu season yet. I appreciate any and all feedback.

as part of my curriculum of being a certified pharmacy tech, I am going to end up doing not just school work but a hands on externship at the end of the year. my curiosity is piqued because I'm curious what being part of it involves, and if it is a paid position. when I asked my advisor this they didn't really give an answer I understood.

any feedback would be appreciated :)

i work at a hospital we walk around the hospital everyday and standing up 90% of the time. my body hurt so bad especially my back. i keep telling myself to be graceful since nurses probably have it worse but it been two days and my body still aches. i don’t have money to afford a massage every month

it’s so irritating that the pharmacists get to sit, while techs are on their feet their whole shift (except breaks). Of course, pharmacists should be able to sit but techs should too.
Just my opinion as a long time CPhT whose feet HURT

The job is a driving job you drive about 2000 miles a week you get paid $.65 a mile and on top of that you get paid hourly $21 an hour driving your own car driving all over Texas you work a lot of overtime, dealing with Pyxis machines that are at nursing home facilities.

Is it worth it? You also get paid weekly.

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Excuse my whining I just need to send this into the void for my own sanity. I work at an LTC pharmacy and was initially relieved to no longer have to deal with the general public, though I still get the occasional alf patient who manages their own medication (yes it gets as bad as you think it does). Though, you’d be surprised to learn that even nurses and other medical staff can be genuine pains in the ass to deal with. I am shocked at how many times I’ve had to explain why I cannot “just send an emergency 3 days supply” from an expired c-2 while getting yelled at. Like unless you’re a prescriber and want to verbal with the rph and it’s not in the ekit there is literally nothing I can do for you right now other than fax a continuance request. Yes, I understand your patient is in a lot of pain, so do them a favor and get the fucking np on the phone.

There is also this same med tech who calls every few days to talk at me for minutes at a time and get upset when I try to slow her down and catch up with her incessant rambling. She is well known by the techs and the pharmacists for being genuinely awful to speak with. God forbid you get stuck with her on the phone because she talks about 10 feet away from her phone, gets mad when you ask her to repeat herself, and does not know or care to learn why we cannot just send her an order on which she literally circled “profile only, do not send” and isn’t even signed by the md. She also always asks me to call the md for her to find out why they haven’t sent a script yet (TONS of other nurses/med techs do this too)… like, no?? that’s literally YOUR job???

There are wayyyyyy more but I’d be here forever recounting them all. I’d say about 30-40% of the calls I get feel like actual rage bait and I just have to sit there like a good girl and let them hold me hostage for 5 minutes. You would think they’d have a better understanding of how this process works than the average person but unfortunately that is not the case. It’s really annoying that they don’t believe me and would rather waste the rph’s time by asking the same question only to receive the exact same answer, as if they think I’m just stupid for not doing whatever they ask me to. Oh and god forbid insurance rejects a fill and we don’t call immediately to inform them (they automatically receive a facility non-covered form), so I get to be their whipping girl. I’m so tired of getting yelled at because a medication is on back order as though I had some nefarious role in it. We’re not even supposed to answer the phones this much as techs but management recently made us be ready at all times (despite having a customer service department) so we literally have to drop what we’re doing and eat some shit every few minutes. Do not work at omnicare if you can help it. I fucking hate it here but they pay me more than I’d make anywhere else right now so there’s nothing I can do about it. It started off as a pretty chill job until the bait and switch.

I received my state license a few years ago and i’ve been a tech since. I’ve been trying to study for the PTCB so i can also be an immunizer for this flu season but it’s been feeling impossible. i already feel like i know a lot just from working but def not all the top 200 drugs generic,brand, side effects, uses and class. i work full time and studying after feels like im not really clocking out ever so it’s hard for me to focus. does anyone have any tips or recommendations for studying? I really wanna take this soon😭

The job is a driving job you drive about 2000 miles a week you get paid $.65 a mile and on top of that you get paid hourly $21 an hour driving your own car driving all over Texas you work a lot of overtime, dealing with Pyxis machines that are at nursing home facilities.

Is it worth it? You also get paid weekly.

I just landed a nice job at a Closed Door Pharmacy.

I've been working in retail for about 2 years as a CphT.

Here is my situation: The pharmacy wants to hire me, but after an interview they want to train me up to be the Supervisor for the Order Entry team in the future.

I'm a damn fine worker and have a good resume with an Army background, but I feel like I'm still a baby tech. I've been a grunt all my life.

I feel like I don't know everything, but I nailed the interview and told them I was looking for the next step and start leading, which I do feel ready for. The hiring manager then told me they were looking for someone like me and have an opening for a supervisor position available and would like to train me to fill that role.

Is this normal for certified techs? Is this normal for new jobs? They don't even know me yet!

Wouldn't they just promote from who they already have there?

I hope they honor their promise, nothing was written down on paper.

I think I just want to talk this out because I'm skeptical and don't want to be disappointed if things don't happen.

The director of the pharmacy seems to be excited about me already.

I took the job and one of the trainers had slyly mentioned to me that the supervisor position is going to be taken over soon.

What do you think about this?

I know some of y’all are going to say that i should try in patient or hospital or wtv but i’m not tryna hear all that rn, the hours just don’t work for me cuz im a college student and they want full time etc etc etc.

But sometimes i really can’t believe i left food service for this. It was not much better but at least i got paid more. It takes a lot for me to not remember that i am voluntarily working at this piece of shit and just rage quit.

I used to get paid $15.00 plus tips, the hours weren’t all that good but fuck at least i made money. I worked 3 hours at my old job and i got paid $80 for that after taxes

Sorry to vent, just really fed up

To start, I'm from Tx. I just applied for my pharmacy tech license 3 days ago, did my fingerprints today, should I be applying to jobs now? Or should I wait a bit? I'm not sure how long it'll take to get my license, I don't have a trainee license nor do I have work experience in this particular field, so I'm not exactly expecting to hear back anytime soon considering my resume probably won't stand out at all. But I would like to find a job asap. Is it a waste of time to apply to jobs right now while I'm waiting on my license? I'm worried about hearing back from a job, and telling them "Yeah I actually don't have a license yet, still processing" and being rejected for that. (I do have it listed on my resume that my license is processing btw)

Those who trained at Walmart, what was your experience? Where would most say it falls in the ranking of retail tech training? I.e., most people say CVS and Walgreens are the absolute worst while Costco is pretty good.

Hi everyone,
I want to start preparing to take the PEBC Pharmacy Technician Qualifying Exam and plan to request to write it in French ( in a year from now cause im going to do school first)
I have a few questions about finding study resources and test banks:

1. What are the best overall study resources or question banks you used to pass the MCQ?
2. Are there any free practice question banks, Quizlet decks, or mock quizzes that were actually helpful?
3. For anyone who took or prepared for the exam in French: Did you find any good French practice materials, or did you study using English question banks and translate them?

I especially need advice on my third question because it is my main concern right now. Since I want to take the OSPE practical exam in French since i feel more comfortable doing that part in French, I also HAVE to register and write the MCQ exam in French. So far, my research shows almost no dedicated French study materials or practice question banks for PEBC technicians. I am really afraid that preparing in English and then taking the actual exam in French will be confusing and counterproductive, especially with medical terminology and law questions. If anyone has been in this situation, how did you handle it? Did studying in English and translating as you went work for you, or did you find specific French pharmacy materials to prepare?

Thanks in advance for any tips or advice!

I finished school through rxtechexam online and now looking for a job. What kind of position would I be able to get without any hands on experience? Do I need to apply for an apprenticeship or training position?

I 100% get the purpose of the drive thru.
It’s for patient’s convenience not for speed and I can’t stress that enough. I have told multiple patients this and my coworkers.

Majority of the time my coworkers get stressed and frustrated because the line is long or patients ask 1,000 questions but I let them know to just calm down. This is for their convenience not for speed.

Unknowingly patients are agreeing to the unknown amount of time someone takes at the window.

Because yet again we want everyone to have a great experience while visiting our pharmacy so we don’t get bad reviews but they have to realize that nobody ever said (at least to me) that drive thru is for speed.

Let’s chat about this. I’d love to hear from anyone.

I work in a retail and hospital setting.

Patient calls and I say (pharmacy name) how can I help you, and I get the name and date of birth. She said she needs a refill. Keep in mind she has 30+ active prescriptions on file. I ask which medication, “I don’t know the name”. Ok, annoying but not uncommon. I ask, do you have the bottle from last time? “No” do you know what it’s for? “No” how long have you been taking it “I don’t know” what was the appointment for when you got prescribed the medication “I don’t know”. Do you know who prescribed it? “No” do you know the strength or how many times a day you take it? “No” so I say ok, so how do I know what to refill if you don’t know any information about the medication? “Because I gave you my name and date of birth DUHH” then hangs up

I hate this job

I can't go into specifics ofc because of HIPAA, and not wanting to dox myself as well, but today was incredibly stressful, we were down to 3 techs and 1 pharmacist who I really don't like (he's always kind of condescending but not in a way that you can really describe to others as rude, but whenever he talks to me I always feel like a scolded child), we spent almost 30 minutes looking for a script that we ultimately had to redo, and the biggest thing is I ended up selling someone the wrong script and obviously got in trouble for it.

thank god he didn't take any, but it could've landed him in the ER or worse if he did. he also wasn't angry and neither was the other patient, but it's still horrible knowing that while in this situation it wasn't entirely my fault (there were a lot of factors), it ultimately would've all fallen on me and been because of me if something had happened to him because I'm the one who was supposed to be the last stop and doing the final check that would've stopped this, and I failed it.

on top of that I misremembered and wasn't exactly very clear when explaining what happened from my POV (I'm neurodivergent and have severe anxiety and was freaking the fuck out tbf, absolutely not an excuse but just trying to provide some more context) and what I said wasn't the exact same as what happened according to the security camera (again, not saying my incoherency and fucked up brain give me any excuse, but explaining how I fucked that part up) so now the pharmacist and the store supervisor in the room likely thought that I was trying to lie to cover my ass.

I don't think I'm in any legal trouble, I was given some paper to sign that I agreed with the reported events statement (which honestly I couldn't fucking read the handwriting but I assume it's basically what the pharmacist told me) and I just said I agree because I didn't want to get into more trouble if I said I disagreed.

the pharmacy manager is on vacation and store manager wasn't in today but I'm sure they'll also be told about it. I'm just praying they don't also have to talk to me about it. I know the pharmacist on duty had to lecture me, but given he'd already done so about something today and generally just always seems to have something he's unhappy about, it felt all the worse coming from him in particular.

I can't fucking take this, I don't know how anyone does. getting verbally abused by patients and customers, getting shit on by coworkers, being so scared to make a mistake and then all of this leading to making more mistakes, knowing those mistakes could literally kill someone. I've made a lot of mistakes already but none this severe. I already have nightmares about my job and I come home so drained from it and I feel like I spend all my time there and I only work 28 hours a week.

and the cherry on top is I make 15 fucking dollars an hour. just barely above minimum wage in my area. and I'm pretty sure all of my coworkers were hired for more than me, and I saw they've updated the job posting to start people off at $17.50 an hour. I'm not even certified in any way, state or national or by my company. I just paid $70 for a license and got on the job training and despite being there for almost a year I still feel like I'm underqualified for everything I do, even ringing up a retail item.

I got in the car and just burst into tears telling my mom a watered down version of what happened. and I know she feels horrible too because I can't just quit, since her and my dad's only income is disability (my dad has cancer and mom's chronically ill) and my paycheck is the only way we get by a lot of weeks.

it's just not fucking worth it. I'm not built for something like this, my brain isn't wired properly to do this sort of thing. especially not with such severe consequences and so many risks, knowing just one mistake could be fatal. I never even wanted to do anything related to healthcare. I was looking for my first job at 19 and this is the first thing I got an interview for.

there's a new food co-op in town, I've not seen anything online for applications but I'm gonna try to find a way to apply there or hell at one of the local grocery stores. at least me fucking up there won't be nearly as bad as fucking up in a pharmacy. everyone says I'm doing such a good job but I don't feel like I am, I feel like I take one step forward and three steps back and every success is outweighed by mistakes.

I didn't mean for this to be so long so I don't know if anyone will read it, sorry I'm so all over the place. I just wanted to vent somewhere that at least I know people will sort of understand me. I did try cuddling my cat at least but she got pissed and ran off, so I'm gonna have a long cry and maybe fix up my resume tonight. thank you if anyone does read. I just have to fucking get out of this job.

That Meds to Beds program really fucked up that (outpatient) retail.