Speaker: Keyerrá Buckley, ACPE Administrator & Technical Trainer, Pharmacy Stars
Keyerrá Buckley: Hello, my name is Kiara Buckley. I'm a certified pharmacy technician. I currently work for Pharmacy Stars as the ACPE administrator and technical trainer. In my role, I oversee a portfolio of continuing education courses that are accredited by ACPE. So essentially, I am helping pharmacy technicians and pharmacists meet the requirements of CEs to renew their licenses, registrations, and certification credentials.
Share how you got to where you are professionally.
Keyerrá Buckley: My pharmacy journey has been a wild one. Honestly, I got into pharmacy accidentally. I was trying to get into a phlebotomy program, but the program was full and the pharmtech program was available. So I got into this profession by accident, but once I got into pharmacy, I absolutely loved it. I've done retail, I've worked in the hospital, compounding, so sterile and non-sterile compounding. I've worked in specialty pharmacy, a specialty pharmacy warehouse, shipping specialty medications all over this country. I've done pharmacy claim auditing, and my most favorite is working in education. Honestly, once I started to put myself first in my career, when I truly decided, what does it mean to me when I say as a healthcare professional, as a pharmacy professional, how do I want to help others? And when I was able to determine that, I realized that I wanted to help other people. People in their careers, whether they were pivoting, whether becoming a pharmacy technician was their first like job into the workforce, I just wanted to be able to provide that education, that training, have them prepared for what the pharmacy world really is, and not just what a textbook tells them. So once I decided that. My internal morals and values aligned with being an educator. I've been able to find happiness and joy on that path. And now in my current role, being able to help those who already Licensed, registered, hold certifications, and they just need to continue that education to keep their credentials, current. I am happy to be able to provide a space and education materials that allow people to do that.
What advice would you give to someone just getting started as a technician?
Keyerrá Buckley: The advice that I would give to someone just getting started as a technician is to keep a handy dandy notebook. I know that probably sounds crazy, but honestly, there's so much for you to learn, whether you are learning in a classroom, learning on the job, you're going to have a lot of questions, and especially like in the pharmacy, it is super busy and sometimes, honestly, unfortunately, the pharmacists and technicians do not have the time to continue to answer the exact same question over and over, and you want to be able to build your own knowledge and trust yourself so that your, um. Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians like the other staff members can trust you as well. So have that notebook, you're going to refer to that notebook all the time, and do not use that notebook for like passwords or anything, but truly learning the system, which buttons you need to press, what to do in specific situations. If you're in a classroom setting, flashcards, there's so much information that you have to learn, as you're preparing for your weekly or biweekly exams. And then of course, to take your national certification, so flashcards would be very helpful to help you study. And honestly, you could refer to those at any time, like say you're taking the bus, train, and Uber. Um, if you're riding passenger, you have that time to spend 5, 10 quick minutes, run through your flashcards, look through your notebook. If there's a particular area that you're struggling in, and you leave that additional note for yourself so you could refer back to it. So yeah, just keep a nice handy dandy notebook.
