One of the best and most overwhelming parts of being a pharmacy technician is that you must keep learning new things to stay on top of your field. For technicians to maintain their certification with the PTCB, they have to complete 20 hours of continuing education (CE) credits. This can be a challenging thing to tackle. Trying to find programs and seminars while also working, having a social life, or raising a family is difficult. We’re here to help!
The first thing you should understand is what exactly you’re looking for. You need to start with 20 total hours of ACPE accredited courses. Keep in mind that as part of that total, you need to make sure that 1 hour is about pharmacy law and 1 hour is about patient safety. Last but not least, you need to make sure that at least 15 of those hours are T designated. That means that it’s a course specifically designed for technicians rather than pharmacists and that there is a T at the end of the ACPE course number.
The National Pharmacy Technician Association (NPTA) is one of the associations that offers a wide range of free and paid CE. However, on top of providing regular CE, NPTA also offers advanced certification courses and certificate programs. These classes vary, but generally, they are worth 4 hours of credit or more. With professional associations such as NPTA, you may want to consider joining the association to get a discount on the CE programs they offer.
The National Pharmacy Technician Association even offers monthly LIVE CE webinars. Most recent webinars covered CE topics such as CBD/Medical Marijuana and Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. You can access these LIVE CE Webinars on the NPTA website, where you can also find upcoming webinars to register and gain access to.
The National Pharmacy Technician Association also holds conferences for pharmacy technicians. Most recently, NTPA hosted an online conference for pharmacy technician students called the Rx Student Summit.
NPTA also has another conference called CPhT LIVE 2021, which will be held 100% virtually from October 19th-26th, 2021. This 8-day virtual event is designed for all pharmacy technicians, which will include CE’s and networking opportunities.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, remember this is only a small selection of companies that offer you CE. There are many, many other options out there that can be found with a little extra searching. We hope that the tips and information here will ensure that you have an easy and stress-free time renewing your certification.
