Earn Your Pharmacy Tech Online Training Certification

Schools offering Pharmacy Tech degrees are available online. You can enroll in your preferred school within days and become certified as a pharmacy technician in about 18 months.

Pharmacy technician certification allows you entry into the health care field where you can choose from numerous available jobs, but at a fraction of the time required to become a pharmacist. You will work under the direction of a licensed pharmacist, but will perform many pharmacist functions such as pharmacy administration, drug distribution, patient service, and much more. In the meantime your pharmacy technician certification will provide you with both experience and exposure to the pharmacy end of health care, enabling you to decide whether ultimately becoming a pharmacist is the career for you.

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Did you ever wonder why getting a prescription filled takes at least 45 minutes even if there is no one ahead of you? Filling prescriptions for patients once only required a knowledge of how to measure and mix medications along with an understanding of pharmacy jargon—many names for medicines are in Latin, and physicians may use either the Latin name or a common name in prescribing the substance. Your 1800s local apothecary could provide anything your doctor ordered and could give you information on other remedies that might help your condition. Today the field is much more complicated partly because thousands more medications exist than were available 50 or 100 years ago, and partly because federal and state regulations require that your pharmacist cross reference your medicine, both to make sure it doesn't conflict with something else you are taking and to ensure that you haven’t already filled the prescription someplace else. In addition to that, most people have some sort of insurance coverage for drugs, so a pharmacist has to process the order through the insurance company and retrieve your correct copay.

All of that takes a lot of time, and one pharmacist at a busy site such a Walmart, CVS, Bi-Lo or any other popular pharmacy could never keep up. Additionally, doctors and hospitals “call in” hundreds of prescriptions every day, and patients call in refills from home. Many of the tasks are more time consuming than complicated; thus a certified pharmacy technician, often several of them, work with the pharmacist to expedite filling prescriptions and relieve the workload for the pharmacist.

Becoming a nationally certified pharmacy technician requires 225 hours of classes. Once you have completed the program, you have to take the Certified Board Exam in order to get your license. The course work can be completed online in about 12 months, but must schools will allow you to take longer if you have a job to work around. Since the test is a national exam, you should be able to take a job any place in the United States once you have passed.

The average salary for a pharmacy technician is about $26,000 but that can vary greatly if you are in a major metropolitan area or if you already have another degree. Also, if you factor in vacations and benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans, your total salary may be much higher although your take-home pay could be less.