(1256) Assessment of Pharmacy Technicians’ Willingness and Readiness to Expand Their Roles with Providing Patient Care Services in Community Practice

Objectives: The primary objective for this study is to determine the specific types of patient care services that pharmacy technicians in the community pharmacy setting are willing and ready to provide. The secondary objective is to assess the motivating factors that inspire these pharmacy technicians to engage in providing more patient care services. Additionally, we aim to assess if there are any barriers for those technicians that opt out from expanding their role to provide patient care services (immunizations, point of care, medication reconciliation, strep/flu testing services). Finally, we will compare the responses between the groups of immunization-certified and immunization-non-certified pharmacy technicians. As the role of pharmacy technicians has evolved over the past few years to meet the needs of patients, it has resulted in more opportunities for technicians to engage in patient care services and advance their clinical skills.1 A recent study from PTCB has shown that many pharmacy technicians are dedicated to their profession and are ready to enhance their skills in providing services in patient care.2 Another study has shown that immunization-certified pharmacy technicians believed their role improved their job satisfaction and feelings of being a valuable part of the pharmacy team.3 However, it is not clear which specific services the technicians are ready to take on and why. With pharmacists’ role expanding to new prescribing services and providing a high volume of vaccines during the fall and winter season, it is crucial for pharmacists to have the help they need. This would allow pharmacists to focus on the primary tasks requiring their expertise to improve patient care outcomes. This study could potentially close the gap in literature and identify services that pharmacy technicians can take on and support pharmacists’ process of care.

Methods: This is going to be a multicenter, survey-based study that will be conducted at a grocery store chain pharmacies in the state of Illinois. An email containing a link to an anonymous online questionnaire will be sent to the stores to be distributed to all pharmacy technicians. The survey link will remain open for four weeks. A descriptive analysis will be performed using t-test to analyze and summarize the data collected, while chi-square test will be used to identify the trends and relationships between the groups.

Results: In progress

Conclusions: The survey results will provide us with valuable information about the specific types of patient care services that pharmacy technicians are willing to provide. Since the pharmacist role is evolving so much, we are looking for additional support from pharmacy technicians in providing more clinical services and improving the outcomes of patients’ health.