Once you successfully pass the exam, the Board  gives you the CPhT or Certified Pharmacy Technician designation to show that you have met the educational and background guidelines.

A couple more guidelines you have to meet are that you must have a high school diploma or GED.  You can not have any convictions on your record that are considered a felony.  You can not have any convictions that are drug or pharmacy related.  Lastly, you can not have any restrictions of registration, or licensure or regulations misconduct.

You do, after passing the PTCB, have to re-certify every two years by taking approved continuing education courses.  This is not unlike any other licensed professions such as, real estate professionals, and life insurance professionals.

Like I mentioned earlier some states don’t require you take the exam but I would highly recommend taking it because you will be able to negotiate a higher salary backed up by your credentials.

Currently the PTCB exam is being offered four times a year or once a quarter approximately.  All you need to do is to contact the board and request to sit for the exam.  If by some chance you do not pass on your first try, you can take it again as many times as you need to in order to receive your certification.

Now in order to prepare for your testing you need to know what the purpose of the exam is.  Basically the board is looking to measure your knowledge and ability to perform the work that is involved in conjunction with the skills required to be executed by a Pharmacy Tech.

The exam breaks down into three testing areas.  The first section of questions are related to assiting the pharmacist in serving patients and is worth sixty six percent of the exam.

The second area of testing is on maintaining medication and inventory control systems and this sections comprises twenty two percent of the exam.

The last section is focused on testing your knowledge of participating in the administration and management of a pharmacy practice and is weighted as twelve percent of the total exam.

Now keep in mind when taking the test that there are 10 question on the exam that are what we call “sample questions”.  These ten questions will not count toward your total score but rather are on the exam simply as test questions that are being tried out to be used on future exams.  You will not know which questions will not count so I suggest answering all the questions as if they are all being counted toward your final score.

You will have one hour and fifty minutes to complete the exam.  A five minute pretest tutorial and a five minute exiting survey will bring the total time required to test to a two hour total.  Since the PTCB Exam is a computer based test, you will know at the end of the exam whether you passed or failed.

To become a Clinical Pharmacist takes a lot of education.  You will be looking at years of studying and also possibly a residency requirement.  If you count the time you spend in high school preparing yourself for entering secondary schooling you can say that your education requirement will take up ten to twelve years of your life.  You will be looking at two years of secondary schooling then another four years of post secondary then after that you might have a residency requirement of two years.

Do not let anybody fool you into thinking that becoming a pharmacist is easy.  It is not.  Since you have to be licensed to be a pharmacist they take the requirements very, very seriously.  You will have to pass at least one licensure exam possibly even two.

On the positive or pro side pharmacists have a high starting salary, upwards of eighty thousand dollars per year.  Since the requirements of how to become a pharmacist are so stringent there are always openings for pharmacists.  Now I realize that the education and licensing requirements might be the deciding factor for some of you to rethink your career goals not to mention how much money all of that educations will cost, but keep in mind that there are also other careers that will give you a taste of the profession that you can use as a stepping stone to becoming a pharmacist.  A prime example of one of these supporting roles would be a Pharmacy Technician.

The reason I say this is for instance, let’s say that you are still in high school,  this will afford you the opportunity to plan out your courses in line with the requirements that you will need to meet later on to continue your studies.  It would be wise to take many science and math courses as possible.  Courses in things like social sciences, chemistry, biology, physics, and humanities will give you a “leg up” with your studies later on.

This is not to say that if you have already graduated from high school that you will not be able to become a pharmacist but it is just easier if you are already in the mindset of what it will take earlier on while your still in high school.

The time commitment for a pharmacist program is a pretty big one.  First off you will have to get the normal core requirements out of the way.  This will take about two years.  Sometimes this is called the per-requisite coursework.  After you are finished with that then you have to complete usually three to four more years of studies concentrated more closely on the profession or the more formal pharmacological coursework.

Once you are through with the formal studies, depending on what you would like to do with your degree you might have to then complete a one to two year residency program.  For example if you want to be a clinical pharmacist you need to go through the additional residency 1-2 years.  If you start the process early in your life it is possible to have this all completed by the time you are thirty years old.

Since pharmacists dispense medication it is a licensed profession.  You will have to pass the NAPLEX  which stands for the North American Pharmacist Licensure Exam.  In addition to the NAPLEX your state might also require you to pass the MPJE or Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Exam.

Since the requirements in Pharmacology are so strict there will be no problem finding employment when you are finished and the starting salary is a good one.  You can expect to earn around eighty thousand dollars your first year working a forty hour week.  Again this is just the starting salary and will increase as you become more experienced.

Although this has been a very brief overview of how to become a pharmacist.  It should begin to make you think about the time and financial commitment that will be required for your education.  If this prospect seems too daunting for you right now, maybe a career in one of the supporting roles such as a pharmacy technician or other pharmacological roles might be a better fit at first.  This would also afford you time to see if this is truly the profession that you want for yourself.

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