HB330 - Georgia State Board of Pharmacy; registry of pharmacy technicians; establish
HB330 - Georgia State Board of Pharmacy; registry of pharmacy technicians; establish
Sponsored by: Stephens,Ron 164th
A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Chapter 4 of Title 26 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to pharmacists and pharmacies, so as to require the Georgia State Board of Pharmacy to establish and maintain a registry of pharmacy technicians; to provide for rules and regulations; to require pharmacists in charge to provide updated information for the registry; to provide for an effective date contingent on funding; to provide for related matters; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
4 Responses to “HB330 - Georgia State Board of Pharmacy; registry of pharmacy technicians; establish”
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July 28th, 2007 at 10:07 am
HB330 is a great bill and one that I fully support. I have been working as a Pharmacy Technician in this state for 9 years so far without the knowledge or supervision of the State Board of Pharmacy. I have always thought that it is sad that the people responsible for providing medicines and pharmaceutical care to our friends and loved ones are only being supervised by the Pharmacists we work with. Cosmeticians and Veterinary Technicians must take a state license exam and pass in order to work in their professions. Call me crazy but I have never heard a story where someone was seriously hurt or even killed by a bad haircut. I am also an animal lover but licensing our Vet Techs and not our Pharmacy Techs? Come on, that is just absurd!
I hope that this bill will also provide a means for regulating Pharmacy Technician Education as well. I know of too many Technicians getting ripped off from some fly-by-night promise of Pharmacy Technician training/education and all they get is tons of student loan debt with no real salary potential to pay off those huge loans.
There should only be one track to becoming a Pharmacy Technician. Education then Examination then Licensure/Registration. Similar to Pharmacists!
The duties of Pharmacy Technicians are getting more complicated every day as our Pharmacists transition from dispensing duties to Clinical/Counseling duties. Pharmacy Technicians need to be well educated and trained in order to perform these newly acquired tasks.
Remember that the medications being dispensed by our Pharmacy Technicians and Pharmacists are going to be ingested or used by our family members and friends!
We can not pull a fry cook or cashier from a fast-food joint and throw a white coat on them and call them a Pharmacy Technician anymore!
The job simply requires much more education and training than even one-the-job training can provide!
I would not want my Doctor or Pharmacist to have been only trained for their positions ON-THE-JOB!
Thank you for this opportunity to voice my opinion. I hope to be able to do it face-to-face with the State Board of Pharmacy in the very near future!
Respectfully,
Lisa M. Fochtman, CPhT, MBA
August 14th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
The future of pharmacy is with increased utilization of pharmacy technicians. If you look at nurse practitioners and physcian assistants taking on new responsibilities to free the physcians to do more advanced work, I feel this will be the furture role of pharmacy technician. This bill will be the first step in moving toward future requirements and roles for pharmacy technicians.
I hope after this first step you will look at educational requirements to allow technicians to safely assume these roles and increase the safety to the general public.
Paul R. Wagner R.Ph BCPS
August 16th, 2007 at 10:42 am
It is terrific that Georgia is moving a head with the process of registering pharmacy technicians. This will give some way of tracking who you have working as pharmacy technicians. Florida has not realized the importance of registering pharmacy technicians yet. Hopefully, 2008 the legislators will come to their senses. It concerns me that legislators are more concerned about making sure a person is trained to inject a lethal dose into a criminals arm, than making sure that the individuals helping dispense the medications to your loved ones are trained. Everyone expects the pharmacists to do more and more and not to have qualified trained individuals to back them up. Not being able to have confidence in the capabilities of the individuals who are suppose to help you muct be a tremendous strain on the pharmacist. Would you like to work with individuals that you could not rely on to do the right things. You would be very stressed, if you did not have aides and secretaries whom you can rely on to help get the job done. Yet there is no requirement to have trained competent staff members to help the pharmacist get their job done and done correctly for the patients well being. I sincerely hope that Georgia can lead the way to requiring formal training for the pharmacy technician. The training must be from a accredited college and not some correspondence course or self paced learning programs provided by the retail stores. It is my hope that Georgia will realize that their citizens desire the best!
Lina Quiett, AS, BA, CPhT
Program Director Pharmacy Technology
Keiser Career College
St. Petersburg, Florida
August 25th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
HB330: This is a Bill that has been long overdue!!
Patient safety should be our first and most important goal, with the reduction of medication mis-adventures (medication errors). This can be achieved by setting minimum educational requirements, before anyone is allowed to register as a pharmacy technician.
With properly trained technicians we would see a reduction in medication errors and the stress level in retail and hospital setting would also decrease.
Educational requirements for pharmacy technicians and Certification by the PTCB In conjunction with Pharmacy Technician registration should be the standard.
Our great state could be one of the few that sets the standard. ASHP has set minimum standards to properly educated and train pharmacy technicians and we, in the State of Georgia, should use these standards as our guide.
To our avail, in Georgia, we have The Department of Technical and Adult Education, two year, Technical Colleges that offer training in Pharmacy Technology and the curriculum meets ASHP standards. This avenue will give and produce pharmacy technicians that have obtained minimum competencies that should be met before they can work in any of our pharmacy settings.
Registration of Pharmacy Technicians is one step in the right direction and I want to applaud and thank you for your dedication in improving our profession.
Pedro A. Valentin
CPhT, BBA
Advisor, School of Health Sciences