Expert: The Role of the Pharmacy Technician has Evolved into an Active Patient Care Position

Sindhuja Merugu, pharmacy technician at Health Mart Family Pharmacy discusses the role of the pharmacy technician, how the pharmacy technician profession has changed, and what is to come in the field, to celebrate National Technician Day, on October 17th.

Can you introduce yourself?

Hi, my name is Sindhuja Merugu and I am a pharmacy technician at Family Pharmacy, which is a Health Mart pharmacy. I've been a pharmacy tech for about six years. I have experience in retail, specialty and now a community independent pharmacy. I'm passionate about providing the best patient care and helping to create a healthcare community.

How have you seen the role of the technician change and evolve throughout your career?

Sindhuja Merugu:
In my six years in the pharmacy world, I've seen the role of the pharmacy technician evolve and change dramatically. When I first started, pharmacy technicians were mostly just doing administrative things, such as answering the phone, filling prescriptions, running through insurance claims. However, in the last several years, we've seen a change in pharmacy technicians taking on a more active patient care role. In some of those are things such as vaccine administration, point of care testing, screenings, providing many medications management therapy and helping pharmacist implement patient care plans. Health Mart also has multiple programs that help to support technician development. These programs are ASHP and ACPE — accredited pharmacy programs that can help you train to be a pharmacy technician and become a certified pharmacy technician with the national board, as well as getting your state pharmacy technician license. There's also continuing education programs available through Health Mart for pharmacy technicians. One of those programs is a vaccine administration program which can help you become an immunizer. Another program that I was fortunate to be involved with is the community health worker program. It was a 16-week course which covered how we could help the community not just in a pharmaceutical way, but in helping find food for patients who are food insecure or shelter for patients struggling with finding housing, and also other financial health for things such as electricity bills. There's just a myriad of different ways that we could help the community. Health Mart has also partnered with Find Help. Anybody can go to https://healthmart.findhelp.com/ Once you access that website, you can type in your zip code, and there's so many different resources available to many, many individuals all around the country.

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