Evolving Role of Pharmacy Technicians

Michael Ganio, PharmD, MS, BCPS, CPHIMS, FASHP, Director, Pharmacy Practice and Quality for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) addresses a shortage of pharmacy technicians and the evolving role of these technicians in the modern pharmacy. This video was recorded at the 2018 ASHP Midyear conference in Anaheim, CA.

Michael Ganio, PharmD, MS, BCPS, CPHIMS, FASHP: What’s being asked of technicians is increasingly more skilled work. While we don’t have data specific to salaries, my personal experience has been that salaries for technicians has not moved substantially. So, we’re asking for more skilled work. We’re asking for them to do things like medication histories, sterile compounding, chemotherapy compounding, so things that not only have a higher skill level, but a higher risk associated with them. The salary increases are not following the requests for what they have to do. We’re seeing more training programs, more qualifications, certifications and not necessarily a reward for going through those training programs either. Until we have salaries commensurate with what they’re doing, we’re going to continue seeing this (pharmacy technician) shortage.