Expanded Technician Roles Call for Defined Career Ladders

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Julie Lanza, Director of Pharmacy Education and Training at Beth Israel Lahey Health in Massachusetts, discussed the organizations’ defined career ladders for pharmacy technicians. As technicians’ roles have expanded in recent years, Lanza said implementing defined career ladders can highlight that being a technician is not merely a job, but a fulfilling career.

Q: How have the roles of pharmacy technicians expanded in recent years?

Julie Lanza: In reading this question ahead of time, I think the easier thing to answer would be how haven't they expanded in recent years, which I guess is exciting. I think this is a hard question to answer individually, because I think they've expanded differently from state to state, obviously, per regulatory and scope of practice. So, speaking for me and my health center, I think for us personally, I don't even know how to explain how they've expanded. I think that we've done so much here in Massachusetts by letting roles and scopes of practice expand that it's allowed technicians to take on more responsibilities, therefore allowing the pharmacist to do the clinical activities and services they were meant to do. But I think the expansion of pharmacy technicians for us here more or less started with the pandemic and the whole immunization [effort]. I think a lot of people since 2019 talked a lot about technicians. It baffled people, it surprised people how technicians stood up and how they came in masses to help immunize and vaccinate. And I think that surprised a lot of people, but it didn't surprise the technicians, because I think this was something that you told people they weren't allowed to do for so long. And then we knew we could do it, but you just told us we couldn't and then it was something that we could do. And since then, I think it broke barriers. So, I think the expansion of technician product verification, or med history, or MTM, I think that's all come along with it. And I think with the robust advanced certifications through PTCB have allowed the expansion of technician practices, and I think it allows employers to develop job descriptions and subject matter expertise. You know, for us personally, we've expanded into jobs in controlled substance areas, supply chain areas, so for us, we've taken those individual subject matters and expanded them based on the advanced education that we can use as a resource.

Q: Why do these expanded roles make career ladders so important?

Lanza: I think it makes it so important because it actually makes the actual prevalence of pharmacy technicians a career. I think for so long pharmacy technician was defined or viewed or the perception was that it was a job, and not so much a career. And I think that I like the career ladder aspect of the pharmacy technicians, I like seeing that pharmacy technicians have a career ladder. But in the world of general career paths, or general professions or professional careers around the world, you know, not everybody has a career ladder. It's just growth, it's career growth. And I think for a long time, a pharmacy technician was a job, and now it's an actual career. And I think that just progression of an actual career path is what a pharmacy technician should have, and a career ladder is just one step in showing the actual progression of that career.

I think the expansion makes it more defined because there is a need—I'm not ignorant or non-understanding of the fact that there needs to be advanced education for more expanded roles. There needs to be more experience, there needs to be that. So, I think that a career ladder defines that. I think that there obviously is something to be said for experience, so somebody with 20 years’ experience is absolutely, there's something to be said for a long-term pharmacy technician. But the importance of the advanced education in an advanced role is just as important as long-term experience. Because, as we know, the world of pharmacy evolves, it's continuously evolving. So, what we learned 20 years ago is very different than what's out there now, so I think career ladders define a lot of the step-by-step progress of career progression because somebody who is a 20- to 25-year experienced technician may just want to stay in that role. That may be where they're happy to be and may not want to advance in their career. Whereas somebody who is a 5-year pharmacy technician that wants to continue advancing a career ladder gives them the opportunity to continue their education, their advancement, expanded roles, and that allows them to expand and gain more knowledge and continue on into different avenues of pharmacy, which wasn't an option prior to 5 or 10 years ago.

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Q: How can career ladders help improve retention and recruitment of pharmacy technicians?

Lanza: It might be in the article that was PTCB did, so we have seen that very much. So here, we're a 14-hospital system, about 5 retail specialty pharmacies. We've seen a lot of retention with our expanded career ladders and expanded roles. I think when you have career ladders leading to leadership—and maybe not just leadership, but career ladders that are not just like, you know, 1 step up, but multiple level career ladders that ultimately could lead to elevated leadership roles. So, you know, you're talking a pharmacy technician, 1, 2, 3, maybe a lead, maybe a supervisor, maybe a manager. I mean, if you told me 25 years ago that I'd be a director of a large health system, I don't know that I would believe you. But I think when you're talking career ladders that exemplify step-by-step progression into elevated leadership, manager, director roles. I think it's one of those things where your actions speak louder than words, and I think we're showing that there's so much more that can be done for our technicians. The opportunities are endless, and I think that what we're showing them and what we're proving to them is that we're here to expand, we're here to support, we're here to encourage, and with that comes the opportunity for elevation, for advancement for expansion, and we're a rapidly growing health system. And we're not going to take that and not utilize the technicians in the way that they need to be utilized. So, I think that for us, the career ladders help with retention and recruitment, because obviously, it makes people want to be here. It makes people see that there's movement and there's growth. But we actually do it more by action. For us, we have a lot of technicians and supervisors and managers and director roles, so for us, it's actually using what we have and showing them, this is what you can do. And I think that sometimes when you're a pharmacy technician—and historically, the newer pharmacy technicians coming into the field now, they don't really see that side of it—but I think prior to that, I think when you give people more responsibility and they're in an advanced role, and they have more responsibility, I think they tend to feel valued more. And I think when you give people a job or responsibilities that they tend to value and you show them support and encouragement, you value the work that they do on a daily basis in small ways and just words of encouragement. I think that they tend to value that, and we're very encouraging as a system to our technicians and to all of our employees. And I think that's big on the retention side.

Recruitment, on the other hand, is a little bit harder because pharmacy technicians are very hard to find, which is why—taking a step back to the article—we have our pharmacy technician and training program, and we bring them in without any experience and we train them as technicians because they're hard to recruit. But we do have this whole career ladder with advancement that we use to recruit. It's just very hard to recruit pharmacy technicians in general.