National survey of hospital pharmacy technician use

Results of a national survey of nonfederal hospitals on the use of pharmacy technicians are presented. A random sample of nonfederal hospitals in the U.S. that employ a pharmacist (either full- or part-time) was selected; the sample size was 808. Survey questionnaires were mailed to directors of pharmacy at those hospitals. The response rate was 83.4%. Survey results are reported as percent of total respondents +/- three sampling errors. Overall, 75.4 +/- 5.8% of hospitals use pharmacy technicians; more larger hospitals use technicians than do smaller ones. The most common reason for not using pharmacy technicians was insufficient workload. For all hospitals, 43.8 +/- 7.2% do not have enough technicians, usually because of insufficient funds. Pharmacy directors preferred that technicians be trained in formal program (51.7 +/- 5.4%), and most preferred training (either formal or on-the-job) be conducted in-house (60.2 +/- 4.5%). Respondents were overall slightly favorable toward both accreditation of technician-training programs and certification of individual technicians, but only a small group had no opinion--large groups of respondents had either positive or negative feelings on the issues. Data collected on approximately 2600 technicians at the respondents' hospitals showed that most technicians were high school graduates who have been working as a technician about two years and were trained informally on-the-job.