What Does a Pharmacy Assistant Do?
Summary
The role of a pharmacy assistant is to assist pharmacy owners with customer or patient care, location organization, and inventory controls of medicines and materials. Pharmacy assistants can work in pharmacies or hospital areas. They are responsible for: helping in […]
The role of a pharmacy assistant is to assist pharmacy owners with customer or patient care, location organization, and inventory controls of medicines and materials. Pharmacy assistants can work in pharmacies or hospital areas.
They are responsible for: helping in the service, organizing medicines by sector, replacing medicines and materials, interpreting medical prescriptions, answering questions in general, and assisting the pharmacist. ABM College offers several courses, including Pharmacy Assistant Diploma, accounting, and payroll courses online. You can register to sharpen your skills in this field.
Your attributions depend on the type of establishment in which you will be working because pharmacy assistants who work in hospitals have different attributions from assistants who work in drugstores or compounding pharmacies.
Duties of a Pharmacy Assistant
In general, the duties of a pharmacy assistant are:
- Conduct face-to-face or telephone consultations for patients or customers in general
- Interpret prescriptions and medical prescriptions, knowing how to clarify doubts about dosages and times to take the medicines
- Receiving, checking, storing, and releasing medicines and products received into the systems
- Conduct inventories and counts of controlled and psychotropic drugs
- Replace medicines or products in stock
- Dispensing drugs and products that are violated, close to expiration, or in poor condition
- Record information in pharmaceutical systems, such as entry and exit of controlled drugs
- Assist with the maintenance of the organization of shelves and displays of medicines and products
- Gather medicines to refer to wards or patients (hospital assistant)
- Daily record the temperatures of the refrigerators that are storing the medicines (hospital assistant)
Areas of Expertise
The pharmacy assistant performs administrative activities in establishments that belong to the health area.
You can work in the following establishments:
- Public and private hospitals
- Health posts
- Drugstores
- Handling pharmacies
Prerequisites for this Profession
To assume the position of assistant, it is only necessary to have completed high school. Therefore, no higher education is required to take on this role.
However, many places with pharmacy assistant job opportunities make it clear that they are looking for a professional with vocational or technical education in the pharmacy area. Because in the day-to-day running of the profession, it will be necessary to understand medicine.
In summary, to take on this role, you must:
- Complete high school
- Have Knowledge about medicines
- Computer skills – Office Package
- Organized profile
- Communication skills
- Technical or vocational course in pharmacy (desirable)
Desired Training
To be a pharmacy assistant, you must have completed high school and a technical or vocational course in pharmacy to prove your understanding of medicine.
Online courses are great options to assist with the development of pharmaceutical knowledge and to demonstrate aptitude and qualification for the role. ABM College offers the best pharmacy assistant diploma training online.
Conclusion
To become a pharmacy assistant, it is necessary to qualify through a quality professional course because, after all, it is a very serious profession that deals directly with people’s health and well-being.
ABM College’s professional pharmacy assistant course was developed for proactive and communicative people who aim to deepen their knowledge in the pharmaceutical area and work in the health market.