Fight for the Pharmacy Technicians.
Hello, my name is Alexandria and I am a pharmacy technician of 8 years from Alabama. I must admit to you that this letter, this speech, was not easy to write down. I started and stopped more than once, and gave up hope that I could make a difference more times than I can count.
I believe the best way to start, would be to tell you my personal story.
In 2012 I was hired at CVS pharmacy, as a technician. In my state (at the time) the requirements were simply for the applicant to be a high school graduate, and over the age of 17 in order to be licensed in the state to work in the pharmacy. My mother and sister are pharmacists, so my first job being in a pharmacy simply made sense. Within a year I quickly realized that the field of pharmacy was not for the faint at heart. Within 18 months of being hired at CVS, I studied and sat for my national certification exam, and passed. Thus becoming a nationally certified pharmacy technician. I was extremely proud of this certification, but also came to realize that in my state, this certification meant very little. Though some employers do pay more for a nationally certified tech. In 2014 my career took a turn for the worst. I was living alone at the age of 19, and was working part time. It was at this point that it became mandatory for full time benefits to be offered to all full time employees, that is, employees working over 32 hours a week. Instead of CVS offering insurance and benefits to the employees that had been working these hours, they simply did something cruel. They sent out a statement saying anyone listed in the system as “part time” was not allowed to work over 29 hours a week, so they didnt have to offer them health insurance or benefits. This became the start of my downfall. Full time positions were hoarded, and the amount of shifts available for technicians to work became very slim. There was one particular week in January of 2014 where I was only scheduled to work one single, five hour, shift. FIVE. I quickly went from paying my bills, to living in absolute poverty. My car was repossessed, I was unable to keep my lights on consistently, and I was having to go to food banks to keep food in my pantry. I searched and searched for a full time pharmacy tech position, which landed me driving to a store an hour away, making less than $11 an hour, simply to keep my lights on and to have health insurance. Living this way took a toll on me mentally. I was placed in a psychiatric unit in April of 2014 at my own request, due to overwhelming depression and suicidal thoughts. My attempts were in vein however, and in September of 2014 I attempted to take my own life. As I was still in my mandatory wait period before my full time benefits at CVS went into effect, I immediately returned to work. I attempted suicide on a sunday, and was back working the following wednesday. I had no short term disability available to me, or even paid vacation, and I couldnt take off work. I had to pay my bills.
Lets fast forward to January of 2015. Things took a turn for the better. I found a CVS closer to my house, in need of a full time technician. I was able to transfer to this store, where I met some of the most influential people present in my life. The troubles at CVS were just beginning though. You see, each store is allotted an amount of hours they are allowed to schedule technicians to work. For example, every 11 scripts filled was equal to 1 hour a technician was allowed to work. So in a store doing about 500 scripts a day, 3500 scripts a week, they were allotted 318 hours to divide among their technicians to work per week. If this amount of hours was exceeded, consequences were severe. No overtime was allowed, period. This amount of technician hours began to dwindle, though the amount of business did not. The amount of stress the whole staff was under was extraordinary! As one who had just overcome a mental health crisis, this was not a healing environment, in fact it was harmful. I was given more and more responsibility the longer I was there, for the same amount of pay. In october of 2017 my sanity eventually left me, I began having intrusive thoughts of self harm, thoughts of suicide, and I decided it was time for my career at cvs to end.
There are a few points I would like to make regarding this part of my life. The first being the manager I had at my final CVS store was amazing, and is still a close friend of mine to this day. The pharmacists are held under such suffocating standards, where speed, and volume are valued over accuracy. Pharmacists are measured on EVERYTHING, how many scripts did you fill per hour? How many flu shots did you give? How many patients agreed to get their medications refilled?
I have watched pharmacist after pharmacist question their career choice. They all went to school to learn to heal the sick, not to become a victim of overwhelming corporate standards.
The second point being,patients are being harmed by these standards.
I once witnessed a pharmacist accidentally fill the restless leg medication “Requip” instead of the mood stabilizer “Risperdal” for an autistic child, a misfill that had potential to do honest harm to the patient had the error not been caught by their guardian. Simply because the time needed to thoroughly verify a prescription filled for a patient, is not available.
The third and final point is, the employees are being driven to the point of absolute mental exhaustion. The pharmacists are paid well, but at a cost to their well being if they cant keep up with the corporate standards. The techs, however, are the real victims here. Pharmacy techs are notoriously under paid and under appreciated. We, as a whole, are expected to do as much as we can, for as little amount of pay as possible. Most of my coworkers at cvs lived in government subsidized housing, and required government assistance to be able to feed their families. In my particular case, not being married and having no children, I was simply, poor. I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back, lights and water. But I couldnt afford to buy a decent amount of groceries, nor could I afford a car payment.
I then left CVS for Walgreens, who offered better pay. Though I quickly came to realize that, though the pay was better, the expectations were very much the same. The pharmacists are crushed to death, and the technicians get absolutely no recognition.
This brings me to present day,
I accepted a position at an independent compounding lab, which is an extremely different environment. The employees are treated more as equals, though still not paid, in my opinion, our worth.
I approached the owner of the business I work for, expressing my thoughts at a recent New York Times article published about the dangers of large chain retail pharmacies. I expressed interest in wanting to make a difference for pharmacy techs, wanting to bring light to how we suffer. My boss, bless his soul, stone walled my interests by simply saying “ If you want to make a difference, go to pharmacy school.”
All due respect to the owner of the business I work for, not having “PharmD” at the end of my name, does not make me less entitled to a job with safety, reliability, and mental stability.
Which brings me to why I am here with you. In light of the recent COVID-19 crisis, it has been brought to light just how under appreciated pharmacy staff, techs in particular, are. Many business offered free services to health care workers, and many pharmacists and technicians were denied these services, being told they were not essential healthcare workers.
I have several goals in sharing this information with you.
The first being, pharmacy technicians are the backbone of every pharmacy you can find. There is no pharmacy in this country that does not have at least one technician running the show behind the scenes. This being said, we are entitled to more rights and duties. Technicians in my state are not allowed to give injections, are not allowed to take verbal orders from doctors, nor are allowed to transfer prescriptions from another pharmacy. CVS takes this to an extreme, technicians are not allowed to do even the most mundane of technician duties and are all but banned from doing anything other than running a cash register, and counting pills. The national certification exam is an excellent qualifying exam in showing proof of a technicians abilities to follow procedure and law. There is absolutely no reason why techs should not be allowed to do the aforementioned duties. Pharmacists are extremely overwhelmed as it is, and allowing their techs to assist them more thoroughly would be an excellent benefit for every pharmacies efficiency, and patients safety.
My second goal being, pharmacy technicians deserve better pay than what we are given. I was started at CVS in 2012 at $9 an hour. When I left in 2018, holding the second highest position a tech can have and being nationally certified, I was at $12.18 an hour. Walgreens started me at much higher, $14 an hour, but the ability to get raises was not offered except in very rare situations, and there were some of my coworkers who had gone almost three years without getting a raise. There is no base line pay for pharmacy technicians, nor is our value acknowledged. There is no one fighting for the right for techs to have more pay, nor do most pharmacists acknowledge that their staff deserves better pay, and appropriate recognition.
My third and final goal is, mental health should be considered as important as physical health in this field. Mental health days should be given just like sick days, in fact, should be mandatory for each employee to take. I was suffocated at CVS, and I caused a lot of harm to myself and my overall well being by not taking time for myself to put the pieces of my mental well being back together.
So here I am, 25 years old, married, life is pretty great. But the shadows of the mental health struggles I went through in 2014 are still there. Pharmacy technicians are suffering at the hand of corporate leaders, being over worked and under paid and it is taking its toll on my coworkers mentally.
I hope this opened your eyes a little to the struggles of a small town pharmacy technician.
This is the beginning of my journey to make a difference, and I thought reaching out to you was the best place to start.
Thank you.
The above video clip is a simulation of the training program for pharmacy chain techs… to weed out those who can’t run at 110% for up to 12-14 hr days. There was a recent article in the New York Times about a OK board of pharmacy audit of 4 CVS pharmacies where it was uncovered that 22% of prescriptions filled had errors.. not all the errors were major life threatening errors… but a error is a error !
CVS Fined for Safety Issues at Oklahoma Pharmacies.. prescription errors and inadequate staffing
The 13th Amendment was signed in 1860 that abolished SLAVERY, and apparently replaced with the MINIMUM WAGE. CVS recently reported ONLY a 250 BILLION DOLLAR PROFIT for their last fiscal year and it is reported that their President Larry Merlo only gets paid 36.5 million/yr.
The fine that the OK BOP imposed on CVS Health amounted to only a FEW MINUTES of CVS’ annual profits…. just the cost of doing business their way.
You only have one health, but these pharmacy chains have very deep pockets to settle any damages that is done to pts that have entrusted their health to their understaffed/overworked Rx dept staff. It is almost a certainty that all thousands of those stores will be opened for business the very next day and may not even miss a single minute of business & profits.
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