IV Pharmacy Tech Certification

by Fred Decker, studioD

Pharmacy technicians work in every pharmacy setting, attending to routine daily chores and freeing up the pharmacist's time for more critical activities. The vast majority of pharmacy technicians work in various retail settings, where their primary duties center around handling conventional prescriptions. To work in the more challenging environment of a hospital's clinical pharmacy, technicians usually require IV certification.

Clinical vs. Retail Roles

According to 2012 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 250,000 of the nation's 353,000 pharmacy technicians work in retail pharmacies. Their work includes accepting incoming prescriptions from doctors' offices and walk-in customers, preparing those prescriptions, and referring patients to the pharmacist when they require detailed explanations of their medications' effects. They're responsible for answering the phones, maintaining inventory, and sometimes working the cash or invoicing customers and insurers. In the hospital setting technicians spend more of their time preparing or compounding medications in specific dosages, as directed by the prescribing physicians.

Intravenous Medications

Many of those custom medications are intended to be given through an intravenous drip. Preparing medications for IV use is especially exacting, because if any contamination occurs it can introduce pathogens directly into the patient's circulatory system. Because of this potential for unfavorable outcomes, employers frequently require certification in sterile compounding for IV-delivered medications and they are mandatory in some settings. The most widely-recognized source of certification is the National Pharmacy Technicians Association, though other private and regional bodies offer similar certifications.

NPTA Certification

The NPTA's certification process has two phases. During the first, technicians complete nine separate self-study modules, coving topics such as aseptic calculations, aseptic technique, chemotherapy and quality control. Each module has its own corresponding exam, and candidates must earn a score of 70 percent or higher on each of those exams. After completing all nine modules and passing the exams, technicians must attend a two-day training program at the NPTA Training Institute in Houston, Texas. The two-day program tests and verifies the candidates' understanding of the IV preparation process by observing them in a real-world setting.

The Career

Pharmacy technicians can enter the field through a variety of training programs, ranging from two-year associate degrees to certificate programs including 15 weeks' classroom instruction and 600 hours of clinical experience. Most states maintain a registry of pharmacy technicians, which might require a separate registration exam. Adding IV certification and moving from the retail environment to a clinical environment can be a good career choice for pharmacy techs. According to 2012 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, technicians in pharmacies averaged $28,940 a year while their hospital-based colleagues earned an average of $34,410.

About the Author


Photo Credits

  • Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images
Suggest an Article Correction