Educational Requirements

Though regulations and requirements vary by state and even by employer, there is still a good amount of education a pharmacy technician needs to have in order to work in a pharmacy.

At a minimum for every state, you must have a high school diploma or equivalent. Previously, technicians in places like retail pharmacies could earn on the job training. However, more and more employers are seeking candidates who have completed a formal pharmacy technician training program. And students, like ANU’s own Evanne Rakers, have found that earning her education at ANU was far better for her understanding than working in a busy pharmacy. “Working with on-the-job training, it was so busy that they didn’t stop to take the time to personally train you how to do things or show you how to do things… I think it’s a lot better to go through the courses so that you can learn at your own pace. When you go into the pharmacy world, you learn stuff, but you don’t get a thorough learning of everything… I think going into a pharmacy after having the training is a lot better than being thrown into the mix.”

American National University’s pharmacy technician programs are programmatically accredited by the Pharmacy Technician Accrediting Commission (PTAC). Students learn to use PioneerRx, the software used in pharmacies across the country to prepare them for their career. Additionally, students get sent lab kits to do at home under the careful instruction of our professors, like Telicia Ward-Thomas, who just was awarded a 2024 Golden Goggles Student Champion of the Year by Science Interactive for her commitment to her students learning and understanding. Additionally, students must participate in two 120-hour externships, for a total of 240 hours, to gain hands-on experience at a pharmacy local to them. Our associate degree program is designed to make competent, skilled, and capable pharmacy technicians.

While education is not required of a pharmacy technician in all states, it is quickly becoming the norm for many employers.

Certification and Licensure

The certification and licensure requirements for pharmacy technicians are essential to ensuring quality standards in the field. Although requirements differ by state, certification is widely recognized as a mark of competence, enhancing job prospects and sometimes even necessary for employment. Certification often starts with the Pharmacy Technician Certification Exam (PTCE), administered by the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB). To be eligible, candidates generally need to complete a PTCB-recognized education program or equivalent work experience. Passing the PTCE demonstrates proficiency in core areas such as pharmacy law, medication safety, and inventory management, which are integral to the pharmacy technician’s role. According to the PTCB, certification needs to be renewed every two years, requiring certified technicians to meet continuing education requirements to stay current with industry standards​.

Licensure, distinct from certification, varies by state and may involve passing a state-specific exam. Many states require pharmacy technicians to register with the state’s board of pharmacy, a process that may include background checks and proof of training or certification. Accredited programs, such as those approved by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), are often favored by employers, as these programs meet high industry standards and prepare students for both certification exams and state licensure​, like ANU’s programs are. By the end of our programs, diploma or associate degree, students will take the Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT) exam through the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB) as part of our Pharmacy Tech Exam Success class.

These certifications and licensure standards help create a consistent level of expertise, which is crucial in a field where precision and safety are paramount. And as the largest generation, the boomer generation, continues to age and need more medical attention, pharmacy technicians being trained and licensed/certified is more important than ever.

The pathway to becoming a pharmacy technician involves meeting essential requirements, from completing foundational education to obtaining certification and licensure. These steps ensure that pharmacy technicians possess the knowledge and skills needed to perform their duties safely and effectively. For those asking, ‘what are the requirements to be a pharmacy technician?’, it’s clear that each stage plays a vital role in preparing for a successful and rewarding career in healthcare. ANU’s programs help prepare you for being in a pharmacy, give you the opportunity to get hands-on training both at home and within a real pharmacy, and prepares you to sit for the CPhT exam so that you can flourish in your future career. To learn more about ANU’s programs, go to an.edu.

American National University – Be live, in class, from anywhere.

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Donald Collins’ Story with ANU

As a veteran, Donald Collins wanted to pursue his education after struggling with an injury and being unemployed. With friends of his working at a large retail pharmacy chain, Donald wanted to become a pharmacy technician. He utilized the VRRAP before it closed in December of 2022 and that allowed him to pursue an education in his new field of pharmacy. Donald has been able to dedicate his time to learning the ins-and-outs of being a pharmacy technician with American National University’s 100% online diploma program. With his ambition and his drive to change his future, Donald became Term 232’s Pharmacy Technician Diploma Student of the Term!

Donald began pursuing his pharmacy technician career through his friends who worked within a large retail pharmacy. With the pain from his injuries, Donald worried about joining the field. However, he found ANU’s online program because of the reputation of our campus locations. “I really didn’t think I could do this because of the pain, mostly, but it’s getting better!” He says. With our 100% online programs, Donald earns the skills he needs to join a pharmacy without leaving his home. Donald learns from at-home lab kits and online access to the PioneerRx software used in today’s pharmacies. He gains a better education than one he would receive from on-the-job training!

Being a veteran, Donald wants to work closely with other veterans to ensure they receive proper care like he has before. He wishes to work in the Veteran Affairs hospital in their pharmacy. With those goals, he feels that ANU’s program is preparing him more than needed in other pharmacies.

“Everything [my professors] are teaching me is preparing me for that,” he describes, “I’ve taken a class to [use PioneerRx] on the computer, but the VA isn’t up to date with that… so I figured it would be a lot easier!”

His classes have allowed Donald to get the one-on-one attention he needs from his professors. He says, “two of my classes, I have been the only student… at first it was kind of scary being the only student. But it went well, I learned a lot!” Not only does he get to have a small class size, but he got to learn first-hand how experienced his professors are in their field.

“I learned a lot about the professors… a lot of their history and how they got where they are.”

Not only that, but he learns a lot from his textbooks. He mentions having stacks of notes for every bit of information he learns to commit it to memory. “And having the book read to you is pretty awesome. I just put it on my TV and just listen!”

Donald served four years in the National Guard, and he describes he was only activated one time in that four years to assist during the disaster of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Because of his service, he was able to utilize the VRRAP benefits awarded to veterans in March 2021. That covered 12 months of tuition and a housing allowance for him for his education. “I just made it,” he says, regarding the deadline of December 2022 to put in applications.

“I tried to encourage a lot of people to do it – why wouldn’t you?”

His future goals include working in the Veteran Affairs hospital near him to not only make beneficial change to veteran healthcare, but to give back to those who have helped him.

Donald would definitely recommend ANU to those looking to pursue their higher education. He says, “because it’s online, you can be anywhere. One of my instructors was teaching from Hawaii one day!”

His advice to new students at ANU is: “Do not give up. I wanted to throw the towel in several times and I’m glad I didn’t!”

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Pharmacy Managers

Many pharmacies, from hospital to community and all in between, have multiple pharmacists at one location. This ensures that patients have access to their medication information and education whenever they need it. Not only that, but pharmacies have other healthcare personnel working to provide for the community. This brings in a Pharmacy Manager to ensure there is a supervisor leading these teams. Many pharmacy managers have years of experience working within their field, as well as having organizational, leadership, and communication skills. They often work with their teams to ensure proper scheduling, quality control of medications, and staying in legal and regulatory compliances. This role requires a Pharm.D. and typically several years of experience of leadership. Many pharmacy managers have earned MBAs or certifications in supervision.

Pharmacist

No pharmacy can even run without a licensed pharmacist working alongside the other roles. Pharmacists earn their doctorates in Pharmacy and are key to many patients’ healthcare.  The expertise they have in medications – from dosages and side effects to drug interactions and essential information – proves intrinsic to the medical field. Pharmacists counsel patients on their medications, they review patient profiles to learn of allergies or drug interactions to keep their patients safe, and they promote healthy living through immunizations and education. Without a pharmacist to guide patients and teams of healthcare professionals, pharmacies cannot exist. This role requires a Pharm.D.

Pharmacy Interns

On-the-job training is important in any field, but especially in a healthcare role like pharmacy medicine. Pharmacy Interns are students, or recent graduates, pursuing their Pharm.D. degree and licensure. Many pharmacy interns work within a pharmacy under licensed pharmacists to prepare for their future roles. They assist with prescription processing, patient counseling, and administrative tasks required by a pharmacist. With the hands-on experience they get from working within a pharmacy, they get to apply their classroom knowledge and practical skills to help better the healthcare of their community. This role is specifically for those Pharm.D. students or recent graduates looking to gain experience before they earn their licensure.

Pharmacy Technicians

The community most interacts with the pharmacy technician. Pharmacy Technicians earn licenses and work under pharmacists. They are an invaluable role within a working pharmacy. They receive and input prescriptions from patients, count and fill medications, labeling, and manage internal inventory. In community pharmacies, they provide customer service and answer basic medical questions. They are crucial to the workflow of the pharmacy as they count, fill, and dispense medication to the patients they see every day. The role typically does not require more than a high school diploma/GED certificate with on-the-job training and licensure required by their state. However, many pharmacists are hiring those technicians with education from an accredited institution for their education and skills.

Nurses

Due to the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nurses were needed in so many ways. When the Covid vaccine finally was distributed to the masses, pharmacists could barely keep up with their normal workload when patients were seeking their immunizations. Many retail pharmacies began to contract roles for nurses to lift some of the demand from pharmacists during this time. With their education, nurses provided essential immunizations to patients so that the workflow of the pharmacy remained uninterrupted. They provided critical care during a time when the world practically came to a stop. In this role, nurses are required to have at least their associate degree in nursing and hold licensure within their state.

Pharmacy Scheduler

This role is important to every pharmacy. Pharmacy Schedulers work with pharmacy personnel to make sure there are professionals of every role needed within the pharmacy. These professionals work to fill pharmacist roles within a chain pharmacy, medical clinic, or hospitals. They work with pharmacists and traveling/floating pharmacists to fill in the gaps of staff pharmacists calling in sick or taking vacation. Pharmacy schedulers ensure that every pharmacy has a licensed pharmacist there to assist their community and team. This role does not require more than a high school degree/GED certificate, however, many schedulers have on-the-job training in pharmacies, like being a former pharmacy technician.

Pharmacy Roles at ANU

At American National University, we offer students the programs they need to break out into the healthcare field. Our 100% online Pharmacy Technician programs provides students the education they need to work in a pharmacy. With our diploma or associate degree programs, students will learn the skills they to count, fill, and dispense medication as well as the PioneerRx system, the technology most pharmacies utilize. We offer at-home lab kits, so students learn hands-on experience needed in a pharmacy. As current Pharmacy Technician student, Evanne Rakers, says, “I think it’s a lot better to go through the courses so that you can learn at your own pace. When you go into the pharmacy world, you learn stuff, but you don’t get a thorough learning of everything… I think going into a pharmacy after having the training is a lot better than being thrown into the mix.”

ANU also offers a hybrid Nursing program at our Pikeville, Kentucky campus. Students attend a mix of online and in-person classes to earn their Associate of Nursing degree. Our program teaches students the skills they need to be an RN, like an understanding of the human body, development, pharmacology, and technology needed to succeed as a nurse. Students will be eligible to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEXRN) leading to licensure as a registered nurse. Recent graduate, Shane Hurt, says this about our program and his externship at Pikeville Medical Center: “You can actually do nursing skills you get on the floor, you see the patients, and the interactions with patients have just been invaluable in my future nursing career.”

Become an invaluable role within a pharmacy team. To learn more about our eLearning platform and the programs you can join to take your next step into the medical field, go to an.edu/elearning.

American National University – Be live, in class, from anywhere.

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Evanne Raker’s Story with American National University

Like many adults that join American National University, Evanne Rakers has a family to support and a life that does not have room for disruptions. After struggling in the sink-or-swim environment of one of the busiest stores in a retail pharmacy chain, Evanne took her education into her own hands and joined the ranks of ANU’s pharmacy technicians. Her dedication to her studies and hard work have earned her the spot of Term 231 Pharmacy Technician Student of the Term!

While scrolling through social media, Evanne found us through one of our advertisements around the time she was searching for pharmacy technician training. Upon her findings of ANU, she found our stackable degree programs, she says, “it just had a path for me. And doing everything online, at home, it was perfect… I love it, the way it’s set up.” While attending ANU, Evanne has even found that it’s helped her learn of the different areas she can work rather than in a retail chain, and she looks to join a hospital setting once she graduates.

Once she enters the workforce, Evanne feels like ANU is preparing her for the situations and daily work she’ll have to do once she’s licensed. She says, “I’ve learned a lot of the bigger aspect of the pharmacy world… I didn’t know there was so much more to it than the compounding medications!” She has learned everything from dosages, dosing calculations, and aspects of patient care that will help her become successful as a pharmacy technician. This was a big difference to the on-the-job training she was promised at a retail pharmacy that she feels she never truly got. She describes, “working with on-the-job training, it was so busy that they didn’t stop to take the time to personally train you how to do things or show you how to do things.” At ANU, Evanne gets personalized attention and time to truly learn the material and equipment that she will use every day in her career.

When it comes to her classes and professors, Evanne has enjoyed every moment. Her professors are “all pretty fantastic. They’re very thorough with the lessons and curriculum. They teach in the caring way,” as Evanne describes. “If I send an email, they respond right away. They explain things. They’ll focus on posting extra videos to help us,” she says. Not only that, but as a part of our High Tech, High Touch education, Evanne received all the lab materials she needed to learn to be a pharmacy technician. She was blown away by them! “The science interactive kits are probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” She excitedly says. “We got a little human skeleton that we actually got to refer to as we’re doing the schoolwork… that was nice to have something right there, and you could look at it and see it for yourself, in person!” Prior to enrolling at ANU, Evanne says she had never worked with anything like that before.

ANU sends students lab skits to succeed – and included in that is access to the state-of-the-art PioneerRx system that is used in pharmacies everywhere across the nation. As previously mentioned, even though Evanne worked in a popular chain pharmacy, she didn’t get much of a chance to actually learn what she needed thoroughly. At ANU, with PioneerRx, she can study the system as often as she needs! “Actually being able to play around with the PioneerRx [software] myself, go through and look through everything, it was great,” says Evanne. “I was able to learn everything on my own time. Even when I wasn’t doing an assignment, I was able to just look through the whole thing, where everything was, and how to do things.”

“I think it’s a lot better to go through the courses so that you can learn at your own pace. When you go into the pharmacy world, you learn stuff, but you don’t get a thorough learning of everything… I think going into a pharmacy after having the training is a lot better than being thrown into the mix.”

Her future goals include graduating and then coming immediately back to ANU for her bachelor’s degree in Medical and Health Services Management through our stackable degree programs. She even hopes to earn her master’s later down the road.

Evanne would definitely recommend ANU to others looking to earn their higher education – and even has already tried encouraging her daughter to enroll! She says, “it’s just a perfect atmosphere. It’s so convenient, it’s a great program. It’s a great learning experience. I tell my daughters: ‘if you want to have your free time and work at your own pace, this is the best option for you.’” She explains that even through the distance, she has developed social bonds with her classmates through the discussions she’s had in her classes. She remembers her ethics class for those discussions: “The point of views from all these different minds… I am very neutral, I like to just absorb everything, and just hearing all the different aspects of what these people thought was amazing! You don’t really understand how each individual person thinks until you’re in a class like this, given topics, and then given how everyone feels.”

Her advice for future students: “Take it one step at a time. Don’t get overwhelmed. If you think you want to give up, reach out to somebody and ask for help. If you push through, everything will work out.”

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American National University has recently been re-approved for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title I program. The WIOA program provides government funds for laid-off workers to enroll in approved programs for additional education that will give them greater opportunities. By helping them learn and develop new skills, we prepare unemployed workers for careers in the evolving global economy.

WIOA program approval extends to the following courses:

• Pharmacy Technician (Diploma and Associate’s)
• Paralegal (Diploma and Associate’s)
• Phlebotomy & ECG Diploma
• Network Support Associate’s
• Business Administration Associate’s
• Business Administration – Accounting (Diploma and Associate’s)
• Medical Coding & Billing Diploma
• Medical Assisting (Certificate and Associate’s)
• Health Information Management Associate’s
• Administrative Medical Assisting Associate’s

The application was approved by the Western Virginia Workforce Development Board (WVWDB) and Chief Local Elected Officials (CLEO) in Local Workforce Development Area 3 (LWDA3).

For more information on how you may qualify, call 833.388.1100, click, or Zoom an admissions representative today!

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• #4 in 10 Best Online Schools for Bachelor’s in Computer Systems and Network Administration Degree Programs for 2020-2021 by Online Bachelor Degrees
• #5 Best 15 Online Medical Assisting Associate’s Programs for 2020 by Best Health Degrees
• #5 Top 10 Paralegal Programs in Washington DC for 2020 by Online Paralegal Programs
• #2 in the Virginia for Secretary school in 2022 by Secretary-Schools.com
• Named to the Cheapest Colleges in VA by Out of State Tuition 2021 list by CollegeCalc
• Named the Best Paralegal Certificate Program for Student Support by The Balance Careers
• #22 Best Online Associate in Medical Assisting Programs by Intelligent.com
• Best Student to Faculty Ratio of Colleges in Kentucky by Intelligent.com
• Best Stackable Degrees for Online Bachelor’s in Network Administration Programs by Intelligent.com

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1. Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT) | Through ANU’s pharmacy technician diploma and associate’s degree programs, students learn topics explored in the computer-based exam, covering “recordkeeping, basic math, pharmaceutical laws, ethics, medical terms, and insurance.”
2. CompTIA Security+ Certification | ANU’s Associate of Network Support or Bachelor of Network Administration programs prepare students for success in the Security+ certification, beneficial for entry-level professionals in information security. This certification proves to employers that the individual certified is capable of tasks such as “managing risk, cryptography, identifying threats and working with network components.”
3. Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) | Indeed.com deemed CISSP as “arguably the most popular network security certification” due to its’ international recognition. The Master of Cybersecurity at ANU gives you sufficient background to pass the exam, “boost[ing]… your resume for managerial roles in the cybersecurity industry.” The University of Fairfax also offers a CISSP prep class for those who already meet the experiential requirements to take the certification exam.
4. Project Management Professional Certification (PMP) | An internationally acknowledged certification, the PMP certification gives the applicant leverage “as it gives employers confidence in your knowledge and project management skills.” The University of Fairfax’s Project Management and Quality Assurance Certificate prepares students for this exam – no prior higher education experience is required.  In addition, ANU’s Bachelor of Business Administration degree program provides a path to achieving the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® designation, an entry-level certification for project management specialists.
5. Medical Assisting | At ANU, our Medical Assisting certificate and associate’s degree have been designed to prepare students for national certifications, such as the Clinical Medical Assistant Certification (CMAC). Students will work on developing the skills and techniques needed for employment as a medical assistant or phlebotomist in a wide variety of healthcare facilities.

See the ANU and UF websites for further information on the courses offered or speak with an admissions representative today to find out how you can begin the courses that can help to leverage your career.

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