Anita Chang
Age: 23

Career:
Title of occupation: Pharmacy technician
Company: Mt. St. Joseph Hospital (Providence Health Care) Full-Time
Superstore and Pharmasave: Part time
Years: 3 years in total but started at the hospital after graduation (July 2005)
Hours worked each week: Full-Time Monday to Friday at hospital, Part-Time at the stores (4 to 8 hours per day)
“I was lucky because I didn’t have experience but they still hired me.”
Salary Range: $850 to $12 P/T, $19 to $21 F/T
Salary Potential: It depends on the union and your company.
At a hospital, the working environment is different, at Pharmasave, you deal with the customers, handle the money, etc, but at the hospital you don’t talk to the customers and just stay in the pharmacy with a variety of pharmaceutical duties.
Best part of job: Helping the patients, going to the ward, stocking. Usually the people in the hospital are nice.
Other possible career choices: The programs for pharmacy technicians are usually very focused, just as it is at VCC. You can become a pharmacist but you have an additional 5 years of school to complete.

Education:
Degree: Pharmacy Technician Diploma
Length: 5 ½ months (M-F 8:30 to 5:30)
School: Vancouver Community College
Grad year: July 2005
Work placement: Yes, students complete three weeks in a hospital and three weeks in a community pharmacy. And the school also emails us jobs.
Advice: You have to be very organized and detail oriented. There is no room for error. So somebody who is very careless is not well-suited to the job.

Lifestyle:
Favourite activity: I have three jobs right now. I have no life.
Upcoming vacation: None, I work 7 days a week right now and I just started my fulltime job at the hospital.
In 5 years, I see myself enjoying: I see this job as stable but don’t see myself doing it forever. I plan to return to school and hopefully go into pharmaceutical marketing, and do some business courses.