Pharmacy techs gain first-hand experience

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This article was published 06/06/2022 (1580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SHELDON BIRNIE

STAFF REPORTER

WINDSOR PARK

There’s no substitute for hands-on training.

Recently, 21 first-year pharmacy technician students from the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology spent time with a state-of-the-art Pyxis MedStation, an experience that will greatly improve their transition to the workforce.

“To bring a new hire on who already knows how to use the tools,, I can focus on teaching them things they can’t learn in school,” explained Emelié Gillingham, an industry professional and pharmacy technician instructor at MITT who helped develop the program. “This is the machine that our students are most likely to encounter in practice. It’s a piece of technology that automates the medications distribution process, reducing the amount of paperwork we need to do, and everything is tracked electronically.”

On May 26, Rose Marie Sunga, a first-year student, spent three hours on the Pyxis MedStation, an automated medication dispensing system used in hospitals and long-term care facilities across Canada and the U.S., during a lab.

“It’s very helpful,” Sunga, a Windsor Park resident, said. After working as a pharmacist in the Philippines, Sunga moved to Winnipeg in July 2021, beginning her first year in MITT’s pharmacy technician program in the fall. “Back in the Philippines, I’d never used that technology before. So it was kind of amazing.”

MITT’s pharmacy technician program is the only such program in Manitoba, and one of the only health programs that have this machine, the exact same one that students will see in industry.

“In the diploma at MITT, we are also taught how to enter prescriptions into pharmacy management software, and how to compound different medications, and how the drugs interact with one another,” Sunga added.

Leading up to that practical lab, Gillingham said students spend time online learning how to use the machine, which safely and efficiently dispense the right medications, for the right patients at the right time. At the end of term, every student completes a nine-hour workplace simulation using the machine, giving them a total of 12 hours of hands-on experience.

“That’s more than you’d get as a new hire,” Gillingham said, noting that while 13 new pharmacy technicians will graduate from MITT’s two-year program this month, Manitoba has only a little over 200 technicians in the province. “We don’t have enough technicians to support the pharmacists so they can help the patients.”

“I’m looking forward to working after I graduate,” Sunga said. “I hope to work in a hospital pharmacy.”