Nontraditional Roles for Certified Pharmacy Technicians in a Pharmaceutical Company

Best practices: Incorporating pharmacy technicians and other support personnel into the clinical pharmacist's process of care

“…The role of pharmacy technicians as managers has also been explored . Although not specifically addressed in this paper, support personnel can also assist in other non‐clinical areas of pharmacy practice, including research and teaching, which can lend further support to an organization's ability to provide clinical pharmacy services.…”

Can they do it? Comparing the views of pharmacists and technicians to the introduction of an advanced technician role†

“…The tech‐check‐tech role in the USA, the ACT in the UK and increased clinical roles in Canada have been embraced by technicians [19]. The level of uptake of these new non‐traditional roles supports the concept that technicians want to expand their roles [7–9,20]. Previous NZ studies have shown that technicians are willing to take on a more advanced role and any additional training required if the opportunity arose [21,22].…”

“…Much of the available literature around the pharmacy technician role internationally comes from hospital settings, where technicians have been taking on extended roles in the UK, the USA and Canada [4,7–9]. There is very little published material on the subject of technicians' roles in the community pharmacy setting in NZ, but UK research has demonstrated that the employment of technicians allows a community pharmacist to spend more time communicating with patients [10]…”