Providing color to the pharmacy technician: a new profession within the pharmacy team

Abstract

“Providing color to the pharmacy technician – A new profession within the pharmacy team”This thesis is accompanied by only a handful of other dissertations worldwide on training and educating of pharmacy professionals. It describes quantitative and qualitative findings with regards to the pharmacy technician, a new profession with the pharmacy team. The profession is designed to improve pharmaceutical patient care, aims at redirecting the workload of pharmacists, and provides extra education and career development for pharmacy assistants. However, little is known about how adding pharmacy technicians to the pharmacy workforce is received in the field. Pharmacy technicians, pharmacists, pharmacy assistants and national stakeholders from pharmacy practice (patient organizations, health policy makers and education) participated in the research. The findings show no extensively shared international understanding of how pharmacy technicians are perceived and positioned within the provision of pharmacy services, regarding content and functionalities. This leads to a global variety in scope, roles and responsibilities, supervision requirements, educational setup, and supportive legislation for pharmacy technicians.We aspired to contribute to the training and employment of pharmacy technicians by developing a competency framework. It comprises six domains: Communication in patient care, Interdisciplinary collaboration, Pharmaceutical expertise, Organization of care practice, Collaborative leadership and Personal development.Our findings also show multiple themes influencing integration and role development for pharmacy technicians in existing pharmacy practice. At a contextual level: vision on the added value of the role and learning climate. At the level of personal interaction: role expectations and organisational fit, personal traits of pharmacy technicians and support through task delegation and role enhancement.