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Matthew Rewald, Thomas W Woller, Mark Sullivan, Stabilizing the pharmacy technician workforce as an imperative for the chief pharmacy officer, American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Volume 79, Issue 17, 1 September 2022, Pages 1445–1448, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxac135
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The pharmacy technician workforce is at a crossroads in the current health-system infrastructure. A consistent supply of highly competent, educated, trained, and committed pharmacy technicians is critical to drive strategic initiatives of the pharmacy profession forward. The perspective of the pharmacy technician as an entry-level position is antiquated. There was a day when many duties of pharmacy technicians were relatively simple. That is no longer true for most contemporary pharmacy technician roles in health systems, which require advanced skills and abilities in information systems, sterile products preparation, logistics, technology, and other areas critical to the success of pharmacy operations. Although a challenge prior to the pandemic, high turnover and labor shortages have exacerbated the ability of health systems to staff pharmacies. This phenomenon has the potential to cripple the healthcare system.
It is imperative that the chief pharmacy officer (CPO) properly identify pharmacy technician workforce instability as the contemporary crisis that it is. We postulate that there are 4 main areas of work that can be immediately championed by the CPO: (1) fostering professional identity formation for pharmacy technicians, (2) facilitating education and training programs, (3) partnering with health-system human resources (HR) colleagues, and (4) assuring that career pathways are properly structured and used. Enveloping all these areas is the need for the CPO to be attentive to the culture within the pharmacy department and health system such that it is supportive of the work ahead.1
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