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ASHP recognizes that well-educated and highly skilled pharmacy technicians have important roles and responsibilities in the pharmacy profession, and that a safe and effective medicationuse process depends significantly on the skills, knowledge, and competence of those pharmacy technicians. To properly fill these roles, pharmacy technicians require standardized education, training, and competence assessment. ASHP advocates that states encourage this education, training, and assessment through the development and adoption of uniform state laws and regulations requiring licensure of pharmacy technicians.

Public perception of a profession is extremely important, but even more vital is the actual worth the profession provides to those who partake of its services. As pharmacy recreates itself as a consultative profession, many changes are occurring in the college of pharmacy students' education. The onset of the Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE), the continued rotations in the Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE), and the proposal to have mandatory residencies occurring by 2020 show the steps that pharmacy will take to move forward. But pharmacy continues to miss the first rung of the ladder as the profession climbs to its future success by not addressing the mandatory education of the primary workforce in day-to-day activities: that of standardized education and training of pharmacy technicians. While IPPE, APPE, and residencies will strengthen the pharmacy "dwelling," its foundation does not have solid ground. A deadline needs to be established for mandatory education, training, and certification for all technicians entering the profession today and, only after achieving these goals, should the pharmacy technicians be licensed to practice. With even more forethought, pharmacy might require that potential college of pharmacy students, as well as those not fortunate enough to be admitted to a college of pharmacy, become pharmacy technicians first. Only then can the pharmacy profession conquer the top rung of the ladder in a strong, upright fashion.

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Did you ever think you would find pharmacy in such a state of disarray? Examples of this include standardized technician training versus on-the-job training, technician licensure versus certification versus registration, accredi tation of technician training programs versus state-ap proved technician training programs, pharmacist contin uing education versus self-testing versus mandatory testing, and online dispensing versus traditional dispensing.We only need to look about three to five years down the road to see the impending "avalanche," when the prescription count will increase by approximately 44% and there will be a corresponding increase of only 6% in practicing pharmacists. How will pharmacy respond to this challenge? Pharmacy already provides more services with fewer personnel, so increasing the number of phar macists and technicians is not an essential issue. We must reassure the public during these stressful times that mini mizing errors and having a genuine concern for public safety is first and foremost in our minds. We also must find a way to think "outside the box" and accept all of the challenges the public has for us.Pharmacy must provide an expanded role for techni cians to meet this workload crisis, especially since the number of pharmacists is down. It stands to reason that some standardized training of technicians will be re quired to assure the public that their safety has not been compromised. "Standardized" is the key word. Even the training that occurs in large chain pharmacies varies from store to store and from preceptor to preceptor. Knowing that the future prescription crisis will leave pharmacists little, if any, extra time to train their techni cians on the job, we must look to outside sources for standardized training.Community colleges, vocational/technical colleges, and for-profit schools are ready to accept this challenge. Currently, most pharmacy technician programs receive some type of funding from the federal, state, or local govThe government will restrict the funding of educational programs to a defined set of criteria.ernments. These programs, however, may already be in jeopardy of closure. With the Workforce Investment Act to be implemented on July 1, the government will restrict the funding of educational programs to a defined set of criteria. Increase or withdrawal of revenue for pharmacy technician programs will, therefore, depend on a contin uous improvement in the following areas: (1) completion rates, (2) job attainment, (3) program and employment retention, (4) wage satisfaction, and (5) nontraditional program participation.As the pharmacy technician education programs at tempt to meet the goals determined by the government criteria, certain drawbacks have been experienced.Completion rates: Completion rates must increase. If students see no reward or recognition on completing their education, they have no incentive to finish their training.Job attainment: Students are well aware that some pharmacy technician positions require only minimal or no qualifications. Thi...