CEimpact Podcast

The Evolution & Career Advancement of the Pharmacy Technician

• CEimpact

Share episode

Ever wonder about the journeys behind the professionals working to advance in the pharmacy technician field?

Join Ashlee as she talks with Liza Chapman, the Chief Professional Officer at the PTCB (Pharmacy Technician Certification Board), and Zachary Hall, the Associate Director of Professional Affairs about professional evolution in the pharmacy technician world.

During this episode, the three discuss:
- Liza & Zachary's professional journeys
- The PTCB's work in progressing the pharmacy technician profession
- The relationship between PTCB and P-TEC (Pharmacy Technician Educators Council)
- The relationship between PTCB and CEimpact!

To learn more about our Pharmacist by Design membership, click here. 

Follow CEimpact on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram

Speaker 1:

Liza and Zachary, really nice to have you on Level Up. I have been working for CE Impact for just under a year, but it's probably on a weekly or bi-weekly basis that I'm hearing your names, especially because I know you guys are really good friends with some of the people who work at our company internally. So I'm really excited to meet you. And thanks for joining me on Level Up. It's great to meet you, ashley. Thank you. And before we get started, why don't you just share a little bit about yourself, liza? And then we will have Zachary follow up with his introduction. And then today is a different type of setting because we typically only have one guest. But we are going to do something unique with Liza and Zachary and have both as our guests. So bear with me if there's a little bit of kind of going back and forth and navigating this newness of the podcast, but I think it's gonna be a great, well-rounded show for pharmacists and technicians alike.

Speaker 3:

Well, Ashley, again, thank you so much for the invitation and we do hope what you hear from us, from your colleagues at C and Pat is all good, All very good things I promise.

Speaker 3:

But one of your colleagues I have known for almost 20 years now, so know them extremely well and have really gotten the opportunity to meet Jen and Kathy your other colleagues that we really value the partnership that we have with PT-T but also the friendships that have been generated from this relationship. But my name's Liza Chapman. I am the Chief Professional Officer at PT-T. I have now been on staff for just over five years. I am a pharmacist and so before my journey brought me to PT-T, I worked in community practice for a number of years. I completed a community pharmacy residency after graduating from pharmacy school from Mercer University in Atlanta and worked for many years at the Kroger company where I had various jobs. I worked as a floater pharmacist, I did special projects, I was a pharmacy manager and then my last job with Kroger I was over clinical services for about 200 pharmacies. So teaching, training, implementation of new projects, advancing patient care has always been a passion of mine and so the opportunity.

Speaker 3:

As I said, I've been with PT-TBD now for five years, so it gave me the opportunity to move out of direct patient care to working for an organization to work on behalf of pharmacy technicians. When I started here, I was Vice President in a partnership development and so that team, which is now I still work on that same team that we have changed our name to professional affairs, but our primary responsibilities at PT-TBD are working with external stakeholders of anyone that has any type of involvement with pharmacy technicians so that ranges from employers, pharmacy educators, boards of pharmacy, state and national associations. So Zach and I have a great opportunity to network and again work on behalf of pharmacy technicians to advance practice. So we really value the work that we do and we value the work that pharmacy technicians do every day on behalf of patients and in medication safety. So that's me in a nutshell In a nutshell, just one or two seconds.

Speaker 3:

I mean, that's a fantastic career, yeah yeah, but again been a pharmacist now for over 20 years and, as of the jobs that I've had within the profession, by far I'm loving what I'm doing at PT-TBD.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. I love hearing about your story, Zachary. Why don't you share a little bit about your background and how you got your seat today, how you got into PT-TBD?

Speaker 2:

Sure, I'd be happy to Thanks again Echo Liza's sentiment for having us on today.

Speaker 2:

So, like many other pharmacy technicians, I found becoming a pharmacy technician completely accidentally and in fact, I was going to school for public policy and public health thinking that that was going to be my way away from pharmacy, but it actually ended up just like sealing my work experience and my education together, because I was working as a pharmacy technician while going to school, so I really thought that that was my ticket out of pharmacy, but it just keeps me here and I started with PT-TBD in 2013. Kind of a funny story I had applied to almost 70 jobs in Ohio, where I was from, in and around Ohio, and I wasn't getting any responses and I was training an intern in the IV room. I worked as a health system pharmacy technician and I was training an intern in the IV room on an overnight shift and I was getting, like you know, really down on myself. Like I was like this is what I was supposed to be going to school for and I'm not hearing back from anybody.

Speaker 2:

And she was like hey, you're certified through PT-TBD. Why don't you see if they're hiring? And they were. And fast forward, that was 10 years ago, wow, yes, so my title now is the Associate Director of Professional Affairs. I started as a coordinator in this same department, so I was really passionate about working with the external stakeholders that, as I mentioned, educators and employers, pharmacy owners, other pharmacy technicians because I really wasn't aware of an organization out there that a pharmacy technician could be a part of. You know, and while PT-TBD is not a membership association, pt-tbd is often looked at as that type of thing because we develop the credential. But I was really unaware that, like pharmacists, there are unlike pharmacists, there was no national association advocating for the pharmacy technician profession. So it was really interesting to be able to join the staff at PTCB to learn like at the inner workings of that and how technicians can actually join data associations and national associations, and getting to work with all of them is really great.

Speaker 1:

Wow, what a great career path for I mean for both of you. But for Zachary, I think you're just such like you are, a mentor or a career compass for so many technicians who have such a unique background too. So do you mind sharing a little bit about what exactly PTCB does? I mean, I know we talked about external stakeholders and how you collaborate and connect with and partner with other organizations, but what exactly? What do you do for the career? Professional pharmacy technician.

Speaker 3:

Well, as Zach mentioned, actually we are not a membership organization.

Speaker 3:

So, that is one thing. I guess we want to make sure that we're able to educate everyone that's listening to the podcast on, because I think for a lot of people they think that PTCB is that membership association. But we are the nation's first and most trusted pharmacy technician credentialing organization. We were founded in 1995 by two state associations and two national associations, so we are owned by pharmacy organizations. So that group of four has grown into six and I can share that with you. It's like alphabet soup, but the American Pharmacy Association, the American Society of Health System Pharmacists, the National Community Pharmacists Association, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, the Michigan Pharmacists Association and the Illinois Council of Health System Pharmacy.

Speaker 1:

Wow Okay, I followed all of that I got you. I followed all of that. I was mentally going through it with you.

Speaker 3:

So rather than saying APH8, ash8, I call them out for you. No, I think it's a might be. Those are our board of governors and we are a nonprofit, so I'd like to share that. We are mission and vision focused, so everything that we do is based on our mission, which is medication safety and advancing pharmacy technicians. So again, we started in 1995. We currently have 290,000 active nationally certified pharmacy technicians through PTCB. Over the years, over 800,000 pharmacy technicians have sat for one of our exams Wow, and for a really really long time. The only product or only program offering we had was just national certification. Did you say 800,000? 800,000 over the years, yeah, but that's almost a million, so I hope that.

Speaker 1:

Zach and I are around with.

Speaker 3:

I hope we're around with the organization when it's a million.

Speaker 1:

I think you guys, I have a vision, I think it's going to happen. I need to be invited to that party.

Speaker 3:

We will have a huge celebration, love it. But for almost over 20 years, the only credential that we offered was the CPHD. But in 2017, we launched our next credential, which is the certified compounded sterile preparation technician, which is otherwise known as CSPT. And then, in the fall of 2019, we launched our latest credential, which is the CPHD advance and how a technician earns the CPHD advance they complete four assessment based certificate programs and once they earn those four certificate programs, then they can apply and be awarded the CPHD advance credential. And I will tell you, with the inception of CPHD advance, that's how we got to know CE impact, because CE impact has several of the assessment based certificate programs education and training programs that are recognized by the PTCB that technicians are earning and then can sit for our exams. So I can. We can have a whole lot more in depth conversation about PTCB, but I think you know in the essence of time, that was likely a good overview.

Speaker 1:

Unless you have any other questions.

Speaker 1:

No, no, no, it's great. So since 1995 through 2023, ptcb has really evolved, and I think what I'm, when I am thinking this involvement came for evolution came from, was the evolution of the technician to. So, back when I was in pharmacy school, 10, 15 years ago, we now have two or three more trainings that you guys produce. And where did all of this evolution do you think came from? And maybe Zach can answer this question. You know, why has the technician advance, or how has the technician advance? I think that's a great question to kind of navigate.

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, I think that I can lend most of my tenure and success at PTCB to the fact that the pharmacy profession entirely has been evolving. Pharmacists are doing a heck of a lot more direct patient care, clinical services, and, you know, technicians have really stepped up to the plate to fulfill all the distributive functions in the pharmacy, or most of the distributive functions in the pharmacy where they're permitted to by the state boards. So I think that, just out of you know, it often comes up and it's a little cliche to say, like chicken or the egg. You know first, like did PTCB credentials come first or the advancement of the credentials come first, or did technicians advanced roles come first? And you know, like over the past 10 years and Eliza Moore, like we've both seen how the entire profession has evolved to welcome expanded roles for pharmacy technicians and then, eager to make their career a pharmacy technician, those who are willing to step in to those advanced roles. And PTCB is pretty much responded to that with our testing based credentials and then the advanced certifications.

Speaker 1:

For the purposes of clarity, can you provide a summary or maybe a highlight of PTCB versus P-TECH and the partnership or the evolution of how those two organizations came together?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, most definitely. This is so. P-tech is very new to PTCB. I will say that P-TECH, the pharmacy technician educators council, has been around since before PTCB. They were actually began in 1989 and throughout their history and PTCB's history, they've been, you know, working closely together because they had similar mission and vision you know with, regarding the pharmacy technicians and patient care. So, fast forward to December of 2022 and P-TECH officially became a part of PTCB, so we look at P-TECH as an official division of PTCB. P-tech is entirely different in that there are no credentials offered by that organization yet, but it is a membership association and what's different about it is it's a membership association made up of pharmacy technician educators and trainers. So, how we talked a little earlier about pharmacy technicians not really having their own national association membership that, you know, offers advocacy and all that other everything else that comes along with a national association. P-tech serves as that pharmacy technician educators and trainers.

Speaker 1:

Got it okay, and what is your both involvement in P-TECH.

Speaker 2:

So I serve as the secretary of P-TECH, and what that means is I basically oversee the operational function of P-TECH as an association. Nice Division of PTCB.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, and Liza.

Speaker 3:

And I would say that my role, I guess maybe is more of an advisory role in assisting Zach in anything that he needs operationally, just through experience, being a volunteer leader in a state association, just having, you know, governance training, being able to be a resource to Zach when he needs assistance. But I have to say he's doing a fantastic job and we take we take a lot of direction from him because of all the ideas that he has and in the vision he has for P-TECH.

Speaker 2:

That's amazing Way to step up to the play sack I love that you know, like, when I first joined PTCB, my biggest stakeholder group to work with were the pharmacy technician educators, because they you know, they we had vouchers for the exam, their practice exams that we had to coordinate and all those types of things and the educators were really like the people who latched on to me and because I was their main point of contact at PTCB and that meant being the representative, like, of PTCB.

Speaker 2:

The face Got to be the face in front of these educators, especially at P-TECH. So I've grown like to know a number of these people, the members and those who were in volunteer leadership roles and who are currently in volunteer leadership roles throughout my time at PTCB. So it's kind of I don't know. It's very interesting and rewarding really to be a part of this group and I also. I'm really invested in it because I want to see it succeed just as much as they wanted me to succeed when I started at PTCB.

Speaker 1:

What do you think P-TECH is doing specifically to advance the profession of pharmacy technician?

Speaker 2:

Would you like me to answer that Okay? Okay, so I, there are no two states alike for pharmacy technician. You know regulations and similar to that. There are no two states alike for training pharmacy technicians, right, that means there are various entry points into becoming a pharmacy technician like myself, accidentally finding you and part of what we are working to do with P tech is to come up with some type of standardized training that fits everybody. Ptcb kind of has that with our eligibility requirements for the national certification exam, but P tech can, has the opportunity to develop, you know, some national standards around what it is to educate pharmacy technicians, because hopefully we get some students and you know, encouraged to join the pharmacy profession and maybe that means they don't become pharmacist but they become pharmacy technicians. And how do we carve out that talent? So I think that P tech also has an opportunity there to kind of draw people into the pharmacy profession from a technical standpoint as a pharmacy technician, but also potentially, you know, to have those people serve them into future pharmacists.

Speaker 1:

Right, so is that? Is that? Is that what you see? The most common goal is the stepping stone, the career ladder to pharmacists. So I think two fold that?

Speaker 2:

I think that's two fold. I think a lot of people do become technicians because they want to go on to become pharmacists, but I think we're slowly starting to see a shift. Yeah, people want to become pharmacy technicians because it looked at as a long-term career and a valuable member of the healthcare team.

Speaker 1:

Right, I totally agree with you, and there's a lot of impact you can have by working alongside the pharmacists, even more than being a pharmacist sometimes.

Speaker 3:

Actually, I would also add that P tech allows educators to network and just share ideas because you know they're not alone, they don't have to recreate the will and so like if some of them have like new learning tools or ways to engage their students, ways to engage people in the community to educate them about the career of a pharmacy technician. I think that that is one of the greatest advantages that we have is that it allows a space for the commonality of everyone being a pharmacist, an art technician, an educator but there are so many differences, as Zach said, because we have educators from high schools, we have educators within employer groups, community colleges, accredited training programs, non-accredited training programs. So it allows a various facet, different facets within the education community to come together and share their ideas.

Speaker 1:

That's so cool. I love that. When did the CE impact PTCB P tech relationship begin? It must have been before my time because I've again. I started off this, this podcast, sharing a little bit about my background, about how I've come to know you to, but where did that fruition and that partnership develop from?

Speaker 3:

So, as I mentioned earlier when we introduced the CPHT Advanced Prudential, ptcb works with various training programs, education companies that have assessment-based certificate program education and training, because PTCB doesn't create training. So we work with training providers to make sure that those programs that they have produced have gone through a recognition process. So there's like a fill of approval that these programs are recognized by PTCB. That allows their completers to be eligible for our exams. I know that that's probably a little bit of a complicated process, but we started talking to CE Impact back when we were launching our technician product verification exam and CE Impact had a TPD program and it went through the recognition process and it was approved, and so that conversation started, I believe, early 2019.

Speaker 3:

So we've been having relationships for the past four years and one thing that we knew as PTCB, as a membership organization, that we needed to have a value proposition, a value ad for why people should want to be a member of this organization. So one of those things is continue education, and we put out a bid for RFPs to various education training providers and we offered the invitation to CE Impact to submit an application and I'll just say it's been. You know, that's history, and now we have this great relationship with CE Impact as the provider of the CE that we provide as a membership benefit to P-TECH members.

Speaker 1:

Right. So when someone enrolls in P-TECH, they gain opportunity to step into the courses that are developed in partnership and alongside PTCB.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and I would say what is so great about the CE that is offered? It is all continuing education around pharmacy technician education, right. So it's not like we're trying to, you know, put a diabetes training program that's the shape of a peg, into a square peg, into a round hole to make that fit, just to have a free CE program offered. But it's actually valuable in teaching education that pharmacy technician educators can learn from and take back to their classrooms to help with the whole learning process.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. This has been so enlightening. I will say, being in the non-direct patient care role that I'm in, I don't interface with technicians or pharmacists, quite frankly, as much as I used to. I used to be over serial products at an academic medical center and I had 40 technicians that were running our whole operations basically. But now that I'm working in a different setting, I am experiencing this whole different level of what the opportunities are for pharmacy technicians. So, zach, do you mind talking a little bit about I mean, we touched on this before, but the evolution of where we are today versus where we were before of the pharmacy technician and where do you envision pharmacy technicians going into the future?

Speaker 2:

Sure. So I will say that I think it's worth repeating that, especially with technician product verification. I remember being a very early tech and people would call that tech check tech in the hospital setting and only where it was allowed. Even though the United States has been doing tech check tech, technician product verification, for quite some time after we've seen its success in the community pharmacy setting, we've really seen it be implemented across all settings even more, or being more widely accepted, I should say.

Speaker 2:

And then to expand on that, immunization administration, I mean most everybody who's received a COVID vaccination in the past few years probably received it from a pharmacist or a pharmacy technician, and I may even be willing to say probably a pharmacy technician. So I think that just a few years ago that we didn't have pharmacy technicians administering immunizations at all, and now it's very, very popular. And as for the future, you know when I use this story. When I first joined PTCB, there were four pharmacy technicians serving on boards of pharmacy and Liza, how many are there now?

Speaker 3:

I don't know the exact technician count, but there are 16 states that have a technician at least one, if maybe not two technicians filling board of pharmacy seats.

Speaker 2:

Wow, having pharmacy technicians be a part of the regulatory process and the oversight of their profession is huge, and that could mean endless things for the future of pharmacy technicians. It's my hope that we actually get people who don't accidentally fall into pharmacy technician as a career and then find out where their talents stick, but we actually recruit people because of their talent into the pharmacy technician field.

Speaker 1:

I think our own. Nicole, is one of the first pharmacy technicians on the board of pharmacy in Tennessee the first. Yeah, I'm interviewing her tomorrow for pharmacy technician day next week and we're going to talk about what that means and how did she get there. What are her thoughts on the future of pharmacy technician? It is fascinating for me personally as a pharmacist again thinking back to when I was in school versus residency versus when I was working in the hospital, to see the evolution and to see how far just such a quick amount of time that pharmacy technicians have come. What do you think pharmacists can do, Liza, to help support and elevate and advance the pharmacy technician career?

Speaker 3:

Honestly, take advantage of the technicians that you're working with. They want to learn, they want to be trained, they want to do more. They're asking for this Now. I know that when we were starting to implement immunizations administered by pharmacists 20, 25 years ago, it was as a slow uptake, and it really has. Just that ball has just continued to roll down the hill and now that's just considered everyday practice in pharmacy.

Speaker 3:

Initially, when we had pharmacy technicians just immunizing in a couple of states, I think it was a slow uptake, but the more technicians see that they can be involved directly in patient care, taking on more of those administrative tasks, having leadership opportunity, greater responsibilities as pharmacists, we need to encourage that behavior. We need to be supporting of that because as and it's very we talk about this all the time to allow pharmacists to perform at the top of their license, we need for technicians to be able to perform at the top of their credential and so and that is just a very true statement in anything and everything that we can do to help identify those talents within technicians so that they can step into those expanding roles, I think it's just one thing and that's a simple thing that we can do, we can advocate on behalf of one another as well, because having all of our voices together to advance practice, both for technicians and for pharmacists, that's only going to enhance the profession and ultimately provide greater patient care.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this reminded me of about a month ago. I was interviewing an independent pharmacy owner and the topic of the discussion was OTC hearing aids, and he stopped me in the middle of the recording and said actually, I just want to let you know, there's no way that we could be doing any cash based service or creating more opportunities for the patients to get these OTC hearing aids without my lead pharmacy technician. She runs with it, she owns it, she does all of it and she totally manages it. So it was really at that point for me when it it it sank in that everyone needs people, we all need help, we all need each other to thrive in our career, and this analogy to me is the the technicians need to advance just as long, just as much, if not more, with patient care, because their accessibility and their ability to be nimble and flexible and willingness to be trained and educated is there. That's how I see this.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely Particularly like in the community setting. Who is the first person that a patient sees when they come to the pharmacy? It's definitely not the pharmacist?

Speaker 1:

Is it the pharmacist? No?

Speaker 3:

Likely, not Likely is the technician, and we need to prepare them and provide them with the skills and training to actually help with the assisting in the care of that patient.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree with you. Well, this was fun. I appreciate your guys' time. I think positioning CE, impact and all these large pharmacy organizations and PTCB together is just a sign to. It's an indicator that the profession is uniting, is coming together and moving forward together. So I appreciate the work that you guys do. We absolutely appreciate your partnership and willingness to work with us on advancing the technicians. And I will show. I'll put all the show links inside the show links inside the notes. I will put all the PTC links for our guests to access and to get ahold of. You guys.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you, ashley, we really appreciate your time this afternoon.

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you very much.

Speaker 1:

Yeah of course Great.