Pharmacy Technician

Pharmacy Technician

Help VA Careers - Pharmacy

Total Rewards of a Allied Health Professional

Pay: Competitive salary and regular salary increases.

Paid Time Off: 37-50 days of annual paid time offer per year (13-26 days of annual leave, 13 days of sick leave, 11 paid Federal holidays per year)

Parental Leave: After 12 months of employment, up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave in connection with the birth, adoption, or foster care placement of a child.

Child Care Subsidy: After 60 days of employment, full time employees with a total family income below $144,000 may be eligible for a childcare subsidy up to 25% of total eligible childcare costs for eligible children up to the monthly maximum of $416.66.

Retirement: Traditional federal pension (5 years vesting) and federal 401K with up to 5% in contributions by VA.

Insurance: Federal health/vision/dental/term life/long-term care (many federal insurance programs can be carried into retirement)

General Duties

• Accurately interpret, fills, and prepares prescriptions with appropriate medications and or medical supplies for pharmacist verification.
• Assures drugs and supplies are appropriately stored and secured according to USP and VA guidelines
• Perform monthly inspections to assigned areas to ensure proper storage of medications and soon to expired drugs are removed.
• Completes procurement duties which include assisting with monitoring and management of physical inventory.
• Reconstitutes oral or external medications (non-sterile).
• Assists in training and orientation of new staff.

Controlled Substances Activities:

• Appropriately restocks controlled substances items in automated secured cabinets.
• Documents all controlled substance related transactions as indicated by VA and DEA guidelines.
• Assures that inventory counts are correct at the time of restocking and filling.
• Ensures proper handoff occurs when receiving or delivering controlled substances.

Inpatient Pharmacy Activities (when assigned): Sterile Product Compounding. These functions will be assisting in or the absence of the sterile compounding technician.

• Follow USP 797/800 Guidelines for the compounding of all sterile preparations, including ophthalmic, cardioplegic, TPN, hazardous, large & small volume IV solutions, PCAs, etc.
• Correctly interprets physician orders, selects, and measures appropriate ingredients, mixes ingredients in a safe and effective manner, inspects the final product for accuracy, suitability, and elegance, labels the product, maintains records of the manufacturing process.

Unit Dose Medication Management

• Performs review of medications prepared by another pharmacy employee to be dispensed to clinic areas.
• Inventories and replenishes emergency trays.
• Operates and maintains automated dispensing unit dose systems.

Automatic Replenishment/Ward Stock

• Correctly inventories, assesses, and determines the need for floor stock and external medication.
• Follows established policies and procedures, schedules, inventory levels, and usage rate reports to determine appropriate stock levels for specific areas of use.
• Accurately fills prescription items for wards using Automatic Replenishment reports.

Outpatient Pharmacy Activities (when assigned): Prescription Assembly

• Assembles prescriptions properly with the correct drug, strength, quantity, auxiliary labels, and prescription labels.
• Assures that the correct medication is filled by using bar code scanning on stock bottles.
• Supports automation by manually completing prescriptions not processed through the automation dispensing machine.

Window Pick-Up

• Verifies the patient's identification following the facility's policies (i.e., double patient identifiers)
• Verifies that the patient receives the correct prescriptions by using VA software (i.e., ScriptPro barcode scanning)
• Verifies the patient has received all prescriptions (i.e., refrigerated, controlled substances, bulk medications, etc.)

Mail Packaging

• Utilizes and comprehends the mail shipping programs used by the facility for overnight delivery of non-controlled and controlled prescriptions.
• Performs searches, updates patient information, and generates shipping reports as requested by the supervisor.
• Calls patients to arrange delivery of refrigerated prescriptions and verifies patients address.

Work Schedule: Pharmacy core hours of operation are Monday - Friday, 7AM-7PM. ***Schedule will vary to include days, nights, weekends and holidays. Occasional overtime may be required. Specific schedules will be discussed during interviews.

Recruitment Incentive (Sign-on Bonus): Not Authorized

Permanent Change of Station (Relocation Assistance): Not Authorized

Telework: Not Available

Virtual: This is not a virtual position.

Functional Statement #: 92222A

US Department of Veterans Affairs