Identifying characteristics that allow pharmacy technicians to assume unconventional roles in the pharmacy

Objective: To identify aspects of pharmacy technicians' experience, training, practice setting, and location that influence whether technicians undertook roles traditionally performed by pharmacists. Design: Descriptive, nonexperimental, cross-sectional study. Setting: North Dakota in 2005. Patients: All 456 pharmacy technicians registered in North Dakota (response rate 42.1% [n = 192]) actively working in a pharmacy-related practice setting. Intervention: A survey was developed based on workforce studies of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. The survey asked technicians to report demographic characteristics, education, experience, pharmacy setting, and community practice size. Respondents also were asked to identify whether they routinely performed specific tasks in the pharmacy, some of which are not typically performed by technicians. Main outcome measures: Eight "unconventional" tasks performed by technicians were selected as the focus of the analysis: compounding oral medications under the supervision of a pharmacist, compounding topical medications under pharmacist supervision, preparing third-party billing, requesting a refill authorization from a prescriber, taking patient medication history information, ordering stock from a wholesaler, taking new prescriptions over the telephone, and counseling patients on nonprescription medications. Results: For each task, a binary logit model was used to identify the characteristics that significantly affected whether technicians performed a task. The practice setting was the most pervasive determinant of whether technicians performed specific tasks. Educational background and certification played a secondary role in influencing whether technicians performed each of these tasks. Conclusion: Pharmacy technicians are able to take on a larger role in pharmacy practice. However, technicians' abilities to fill these expanded roles may be limited and depend on various factors, including practice setting, acceptance by pharmacists, and technician experience.