Pharmacy Technician Practice Assessments

The Pharmacy Technician Assessment Criteria focus on four key areas (domains):

  • Patient care support activities
  • Collaboration and decision making
  • Documentation
  • Communication

For each area, specific performance indicators — which describe the minimum practice requirement for all pharmacy technicians regardless of practice site — are identified. The guidance section of the criteria illustrates how the performance indicator will apply in practice and provides examples of activities that support each standard.

Through a combination of observation and retrospective review of documentation practice advisors evaluate the processes in place for each of these areas with respect to drug distribution activities, compounding practices, best possible medication histories and patient education activities.

Specific documentation needs to be submitted at least two weeks ahead of the scheduled practice assessment date. Please see the documentation submission information below on what and how to submit.

Resources

Key resources to support preparation for the practice assessment include:

 

Document Submission for the Pharmacy Technician Practice Assessment

The deadline to submit your documents is 2 weeks prior to your assessment date; however, you may submit your documents earlier if you choose.

We take patient privacy very seriously at the Ontario College of Pharmacists. All document submissions containing personal health information (patient name, etc.) are done via an encrypted web portal. The web portal has end-to-end security, meaning all information is secure from the moment you send the email to the moment we receive it at the College.

Redaction of patient information should be done according to your organization’s policies. Practice advisors do not need access to patient identities to perform the assessment. However, it is important for you to know the identity of your patients to provide any additional information during the assessment. If redacted copies are sent to OCP, you should keep a record of the patient’s name for your own use.

If you are using a personal device for any part of the submission, you should be redacting your documents. If redacting, do so fully and on a copy, not the original documents. Be vigilant for the presence of patient identifiers; these may appear in water marks found on prescriptions. Failure to fully redact, when necessary, may result in a privacy breach.

Please submit the following list of recent (i.e., within the last three months) examples.

  • New prescriptions processed, filled or checked – 2 examples (1 regular prescription and 1 opioid prescription)
  • Refill prescriptions processed, filled or checked – 2 examples (1 regular prescription and 1 opioid prescription)
  • Compliance packs filled or checked – 2 examples (include examples of in house prepared compliance packs and central fill compliance packs if applicable)
  • Non-sterile compounded prescriptions completed or checked – 2 examples (ensure the complete compounding record is included in the documentation)
  • Prescription clarifications made for patient – 2 examples, if possible
  • Verbal prescriptions received for a patient – 2 examples, if possible
  • Administration of an injection – 1 example, if applicable
  • Training patient on a device – 1 example, if possible (including examples of references used, process for training and any documentation)
  • Documentation of a near miss/incident reported – 1 example
  • Automation in pharmacy – 1 example of transactions for either restocking of canisters or verifying accuracy of dispensing

Documentation for each example should include:

  1. Prescription
  2. Hardcopy
  3. Complete prescription record
  4. Summary of the patient profile
  5. Any documentation made at the time (e.g., notes on the pharmacy software system/patient profile, identification of drug therapy problems, correspondence with prescriber, what information was gathered, where information was documented in the pharmacy computer, communications with pharmacy team).

Please submit the following list of recent examples.

  • Documentation of communication with the pharmacist, physician and/or nurse (for example, consulting pharmacist for decision-making, collaboration, narcotic audits/inventory, end of shift communication) – 1 example
  • Medication safety suggestions brought forward to team/supervisor/manager – 1 example
  • Documentation of a good catch/near miss or medication incident reported (try to send a copy of your electronic submission or write out the example) – 1 example

For the role that you are trained/certified to perform and have done recently (the last shifts worked) prior to submission due date, submit 8 total examples from the following:

  • Product preparation/transactions you have performed (for example: a BPMH with all source information gathered (including the final paper and electronic documentation); sterile or non-sterile compounding records (recipe/formula, electronic/paper records, label – this may be a batch and a patient specific example); repackaging (including perpetual inventory if applicable), fill list, order entry, narcotic returns or discrepancies, narcotic tracers/audits performed, ADC restocking, interim doses). NOTE: At least 1 example must include documentation of calculations performed.

To ensure that the practice advisor knows which documents correspond to which type of patient care activity, we ask that you please NAME the document attachments to indicate this clearly. For example: NEW RX 1 or BPMH 1 or COMPOUNDING 2.

For all the requested documentation, you should either:

  • scan the documents and save the screenshots as PDFs (strongly preferred), or
  • take a picture and save as a JPG.

Please ensure the quality of the picture is of good clarity and reasonable size so the practice advisor can read it easily.

For PDFs, use 1 PDF per example (i.e., include all documents for 1 example in the same PDF). Documents should be well organized, so it is easy to figure out what happened.

No. Please submit your documentation exactly as it looked when you completed it. We are trying to assess your everyday practice. You will be given the chance to elaborate during the practice assessment.

Documents MUST be submitted through the encrypted web portal to ensure secure transmission of patient information. Replying outside of the portal can result in a privacy breach.

You will receive an encrypted email from ocpdocumentation@ocpinfo.com where you will be prompted to create an encrypted account.

  • Check your junk mail if you cannot find the encrypted email.
  • The encrypted email automatically deletes 30 days after it is sent.  You will automatically receive an encrypted email about 4 weeks prior to your assessment date.
  • If you have any issues accessing your encrypted email, please contact ocpdocumentation@ocpinfo.com.

Then, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the link to create your account and password.
  2. Complete the new user activation form and click “Activate.”
  3. When you are ready to submit your documents, sign into your account.
  4. After signing into your encrypted account, select the email from OCP Documentation.
  5. REPLY to the document submission email. The “Reply” button may appear as an arrow.
  6. Attach your first example. The “Attach” button may appear as a paperclip.
  7. Browse your files and select your first example.
  8. Your selected example should appear in your email.
  9. Due to email attachment size limitations, please only submit one patient care example per email.
  10. Ensure your name and registration number are in the subject line of each email.
  11. Click Send.
  12. Repeat this process for each of your examples.
  13. Send a SEPARATE email listing the examples you have submitted and the corresponding number of attachments so this can be reconciled.

Important:

  • Submit all your examples on the SAME DAY.
  • It takes time to review your submission. Please be patient.  You may not receive a confirmation of receipt immediately.
  • This encrypted email automatically deletes 30 days after it is sent. You will automatically receive a replacement encrypted email 28 days prior to your assessment. This timeline will not affect any documents you have previously submitted for your practice assessment. Your documents will remain on file until your assessment date. If you require an additional encrypted email to be sent, please email ocpdocumentation@ocpinfo.com to request one.
  • Please do not mail or fax any documentation to the College.
  • If you have unique circumstances around documentation submission please consult with your organization, if required, and discuss directly with your practice advisor.

All documents submitted to the practice advisor for the purposes of the practice assessment will be securely destroyed 15 days after the assessment documentation has been uploaded to OCP’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system according to OCP’s Records Retention Schedule and Privacy Management practices.

The OCP is committed to providing the highest level of security, controls and integrity to support secure email encryption for information transfer. As such our email encryption service provider adheres to the following standards:

  • Web Trust Certified
  • PCI DSS Level 1 Certified
  • Encryption Standards:
    • RSA 2048-bit asymmetric encryption
    • RSA PKCS cryptographic protocols; PKCS#1, #7, #10, #12
    • AES-256 symmetric encryption
    • SHA2 hashing algorithm
    • ANSI X.509 certificates and certificate revocation lists
    • IETF MIME and S/MIME email