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pharmacy technician pharMacology
pharmacy technician pharMacology
pharmacy technician pharMacology
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Pharmacy Technicians Despite popular belief, pharmacy technicians are more than laborers; they are specially trained individuals. Imagine a family member is admitted to the University of South Alabama Hospital with an acute case of pneumonia, which will require oral and intravenous medications. These medications must be precisely prepared and properly delivered. The common perception is that pharmacists prepare medications and technicians simply deliver them. This view of their job is both accurate and inaccurate. Pharmacy technicians are most often seen as the pharmacy’s “delivery-boy”. Technicians are responsible for timely delivery of medications. However, delivery of medications is more than the act of getting drugs to a patient. The delivery of medication is directly tied to the charge for the medication. Thus the responsibility for charging or crediting medication belongs to technicians. This aspect of their job is strictly governed by federal regulations. These laws hold the technician directly responsible for the accuracy of a patient’s account’s charge and credit transactions. Because every dose is related to a specific day and time, when technicians credit they must apply that change to the corresponding dose. Assignificant as accuracy is to the patient’s account, accuracy in the making of their medications is even more important. Precision of a patient’s intravenous medication is essential; it must be safe from contamination, toxicity, and side effects. Most people believe these medications are compounded or mixed by a trained and licensed individual. However, this is inaccurate because the pharmacy technician actually compounds a large percentage of a patient’s medications. Compounding involves a techn... ... middle of paper ... ... for every pharmacist. This ratio dictates that pharmacists can not oversee every aspect of technicians’ jobs. It is this singular fact that very few people realize. The pharmacy technician who receives no formal training is responsible for not just the delivery of a patient’s medication, but also for their bill, their confidential information, and their life. The question now is, how can an uneducated individual be given so much responsibility? Technicians are granted these responsibilities because a pharmacist can not do the job alone. Pharmacists strive to mold each new technician into an employee that will realize what technicians really do. Pharmacists and technicians provide patients with safe and accurate medication in a timely manner. This is not a task for pharmacists or technicians alone; it is task that requires both personnel in order to be accomplished.
Giving out the wrong medication, or improper dosages can potentially be fatal to patients. Pharmacy technicians must be willing to take on this risk and do their work as carefully and accurately as possible.
Furthermore, short staffing affects the quality direct care each patient receives. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (2012) states an estimated 98,000 individuals die every year from medical errors in the United States. One out of many significant tasks nurses do within their scope of practice is medication administration. Research shows a relationship between short staffing on medication errors: the longer the hours nurses work, the higher the chances of medication errors (Garnett, 2008). (include definition of medication error) Administering medications requires knowledge of patient rights, pharmacological information on the drug, adverse effects, proper dosage calculations, and hospital protocols. When nurses are assigned more patients, they are pressured to give due medications on time. Sometimes due to hunger or fatigue, nurses give the wrong medication to the wrong patient (Frith, Anderson, Tseng, & Fong, 2012).
Responsibility and accountability become important when medical staff gives or doses patients with medication. The chance for making a medication error presents itself at all times. Those passing medications must follow established policies and procedures developed and laid forth by t...
Nurses are expected to provide a competent level of care that is indicative of their education, experience, skill, and ability to act on agency policies or procedures. In a study of 1,116 hospitals Bond, Raehl, and Franke (2001) found, “Medication errors occurred in 5.07% of the patients admitted each year to these hospitals. Each hospital experienced a medication error every 22.7 hours (every 19.73 admissions). Medication errors that adversely affected patient care outcomes occurred in 0.25% of all patients admitted to these hospitals/year”(p. 4). This means at least one medication error occurs every 24 hours in those facilities studied, and these are preventable errors. The main responsibilities of nurses when administering medications are to prevent or catch error, and report such error. Even if the physician or prescribing health care professional has made a mistake in the order, it is the nurse’s job to question the
Pharmacy technicians hold important roles and duties in the pharmacy. They are essentially the pharmacist’s aide, but they hold many responsibilities in controlling the drugs. I interviewed a pharmacy technician, Kathy, who worked at Doctor’s Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy. Kathy was kind enough to take some time out of her day to allow me to ask her questions, mainly about her education, roles and experiences she had as a pharmacy technician.
while transferring patients between units. [After reviewing these events], “The Joint Commission identified “Improve the Safety of Using Medications” as one of the 2009 National Patient Safety Goals (Cleveland Clinic, 2009, p.1). In relation to this safety goal, hospitals created a medication reconciliation form that resides in the patient’s ch...
I have decided to choose Pharmacy Technician as my health care profession. This field deals with drugs and making sure that we, as Pharmacy Technicians, give patients the right drug that doctors’ prescribe to an individual. In a pharmacy, a technician has many different jobs to do in the pharmacy. For example, we check the drugs that we have on stock to ensure that they aren’t expired. If the technician fails check each drug for expiration then, it could be a danger for the patient that is receiving the drug. They also have other jobs that are just as important. Such as, putting the prescription on file and maintaining the patient’s records to prevent a mix-up in prescription distribution and also to ensure the correct amount is given. In a community, pharmacy technicians have even more tasks which
For starters, I felt that the discussion and activity relating to the attributes of a Pharmacy Technician was useful and insightful given the fact that it was professionally conducted and spoken by experienced members in enabling invaluable communicative purposes for career awareness and betterment through an engaged and collaborative environment.Additionally, I feel as though that all pharmacy technician need to have a well-rounded skill set to help patients with their medication needs. Important traits range from dependability and integrity, to attention to detail and sound reporting skills, supporting their ultimate goal of ensuring that drug therapy is carried out safely and successfully. My intent is to incorporate these important traits
Pharmacists have a very tedious job because it requires a lot of attention to detail. Pharmacists dispense drugs and provide information to the patients about medication. Not only do they provide information to patients about side effects, but also they inform physicians of the ever-changing selection of drugs and dosage. Weighing, measuring, mixing drugs, finding the identity and purity, and strength of medications is also an important part of the job. Pharmacists must be sure not to dispense drugs that will have a negative reaction to the other medications that the patient may already be taking. Pharmacists work in clean, well-lighted, and well-ventilated areas. They work with dangerous materials and sterile pharmaceutical products, which require them to wear gloves and masks. Many full time, salaried pharmacists work at least about forty hours per week. Community pharmacists research and dispense information and help for diabetes, asthma, smoking cessation, and high blood pressure....
Some method such as audits, chart reviews, computer monitoring, incident report, bar codes and direct patient observation can improve and decrease medication errors. Regular audits can help patient’s care and reeducate nurses in the work field to new practices. Also reporting of medication errors can help with data comparison and is a learning experience for everyone. Other avenues that has been implemented are computerized physician order entry systems or electronic prescribing (a process of electronic entry of a doctor’s instructions for the treatment of patients under his/her care which communicates these orders over a computer network to other staff or departments) responsible for fulfilling the order, and ward pharmacists can be more diligence on the prescription stage of the medication pathway. A random survey was done in hospital pharmacies on medication error documentation and actions taken against pharmacists involved. A total of 500 hospital were selected in the United States. Data collected on the number of medication error reported, what types of errors were documented and the hospital demographics. The response rate was a total of 28%. Practically, all of the hospitals had policies and procedures in place for reporting medication errors.
Communication in the Pharmacy as a pharmacy technician has many important roles and responsibilities when it comes to patient care. some of these roles and responsibilities can include great customer service skills, being knowledgeable about medications, being attentive to detail.
What is customer service and how does it connect to the soft skills needed to be a pharmacy technician? The topic of customer service has been covered extensively the past couple of weeks, and my perception of it now is extremely different than my perception of it when i started this course. Not only will i talk about my newfound knowledge of customer service in this paper and one the soft skills required to be the best employee possible, but i will also talk about how these two things relate to having the job of being a pharmacy technician.
In the world of pharmacy, it has become increasingly common for the technicians and assistants who are minding the store. Pharmacy technicians are the people who help the patients in different ways. The roles of a pharmacy technician have changed so much over the years (Saffer 34). In the past, a pharmacy technician is primary job was to fill prescription. However, now they have several responsibilities dealing with comparing and selling prescriptions to the patients. Pharmacy technicians have the opportunity to specialize in different areas of healthcare, such as advising patients about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and better living.
First, here is some important background information about Pharmacists. A Pharmacist is someone who is trained and licensed to distribute medicinal drugs and to advise on their use. According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook Pharmacists do all of the following: "Fill prescriptions, verify proper amounts of medication to give to patients, check whether the prescription will interact negatively with other drugs that a patient is taking or conditions the patient has, instruct patients on how to and when to take a prescribed medicine, Advise patients on potential side effects they may experience from taking the medicine, Advise patients about general health topics, such as diet, exercise, managing stress, and on other issues, such as what equipment or supplies would be best for a health problem, Keep records and do other administrative tasks, Complete insurance forms and work with insurance companies to be sure that patients get the medicine they need, Teach other healthcare practitioners about proper medication therapies for patients, and lastly oversee the work of pharmacy technicians and pharmacists training."() Some pharmacists participate in compounding, where they create medications by mixing ingredients themselves. Pharmacists tha...
Pharmacist and Pharmacy technician should modify their counselling questions according to the feedback given by the customer. They should avoid medical terms and use easy language.