If you want to work as a pharmacist assistant, you’ll need to be organized because you’ll be required to multitask frequently. Working as a pharmacy assistant can require you to interact with a wide range of people, from doctors to people with disabilities, so excellent communication skills are essential. Because you should have a basic understanding of common diseases and the medications used to treat them, having some medical knowledge can be beneficial. It’s critical to have strong math skills because you’ll be measuring and dispensing prescriptions frequently.
You may be required to answer the phone, operate a cash register, and dispense prescription medications while working as a pharmacy assistant. You may be expected to complete these tasks in a short amount of time. Because you will often be working in a fast-paced environment as a pharmacist assistant, being able to juggle multiple tasks at once will be beneficial.
If you want to work as a pharmacist assistant, you must have excellent customer service skills. This is because, in the course of a typical work day, you will interact with a wide range of people. Some may be highly educated professionals like doctors or pharmacists, while others may be ordinary people who are ill or disabled. You’ll need to communicate with all of these people while remaining polite and respectful, so good interpersonal skills are essential in this line of work.
You’ll need some basic medical knowledge to read and decipher prescriptions, which can be part of your daily routine. It’s a good idea to keep up with the latest medicines so you’ll have a basic understanding of them before you have to dispense a prescription. Many pharmacy assistant schools also require students to take anatomy and medical terminology classes, which can help you communicate more effectively with other health-care professionals after you graduate.
Calculations may be part of your daily routine as a pharmacist assistant, so you should brush up on your math skills before applying. The majority of medications are sold in metric units, so you’ll need to know how to convert them from English measurements. When dispensing drugs, accuracy and attention to detail are critical, so you’ll need to be able to quickly and precisely add, subtract, and multiply different units of measure.