Advancing the profession

TechLectures is having a holiday contest. They ask a single question.  How do we professionalize our vocation?  Follow the link for more details.  While I will not be entering the contest (as to avoid any notion of a conflict of interest, with a link being placed on my site.) I will give you my short essay.

First of all, Show your Pharmacist that we are essential in the practice.   Good Pharmacists who advocate for us are key. There is no doubt we would loose the battle without them.

Moving on, A National Exam and Certification/CE should be required to work in this role in all 50 states.  That exam only being taken at the completion of an accredited education program.  And abolish those shady diploma mills and programs that charge inflated prices and make promises of unrealistic salaries and job growth.

The Pharmacy Technician has the potential to grow into a tried and true Paraprofession.  We lack the recognition as a trained and educated staff member. This will never happen without legislation on state and national levels that regulate their education a training.

Paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians have both State and National bodies that oversee their education, training, and licensee.  And while I know little about that profession, it seems that these boards have struck an nice balance to maintain the minimum National standards of the NHTSA and the states still have individual freedom to regulate farther how they see fit.  The Boards of Pharmacy, resisting all lobbies from large corporations, should enact a similar method with stronger minimums. The training programs designed by the large chain pharmacies do nothing more than train their employees just enough to pass muster and are simplistic enough that a tech who relies solely on their training could never advance any farther on that alone. These should not be recognized by the boards as an adequate training model. An organization such as the PTCB needs to be in charge of a uniform testing model, and be enacted in all states.

Speaking of salaries, as much as it pains me to say this, we need to stop using how much we should make as a talking point.  Nobody in this profession is in it because of the money, and we will never become rich doing it.  That’s just reality. The only thing we should be pushing for at this point is a living wage. too many of us hover around or below the poverty line. While it’s unrealistic to imagine a world where every tech who puts on a lab coat will make more than half of what the Pharmacist makes, for the work that we do, we deserve the compensation that will allow us to live. Minimum wage is not a living wage.  Above that we need to move on to our other focus, and not appear greedy to those we are trying to convince.

Activism is the way to obtain it, and apathy will only hurt us.  If you are satisfied punching in and punching out and nothing more, we will never prevail. Join grassroots organizations. Write your congressmen. Attend board meetings and learn how the system works. And GET INVOLVED.