Abam Charges Pharmacy Technicians On Proficiency

Pharmacy technicians in primary health facilities have been charged to be more proficient in the discharge of their duties.

Executive Secretary of Rivers State Primary Health Care Management Board, Dr Claribel I. Abam gave the charge at a one -day update workshop for pharmacy technicians in the primary health facilities the state.

Abam stressed the need for pharmacy technicians to carry out proper documentation of pharmaceutical activities in their health facilities by arming themselves with adequate information of available drug stock that would enable them make accurate forcasting of drug requisition.

She said ” It  is also in your best interest to know exactly how much you are generating and how much you require to do your work, so you must ask that question although we have a central revenue base, you should be able to know how much you have generated from drug in every given week so that when you are making your requests you know how much you have”

Dr. Abam decried the poor documentation of pharmaceutical activities of in some health facilities which she said informed the need for the update training and urged the participants to take the workshop seriously and improve on the knowledge that they had previously acquired.

Director, pharmaceutical services at the Board, Mrs Atonye Cookey-Gam disclosed that the participants would be taking courses on documentation requirements for pharmaceutical services practice, doumentation in inventory and management at PHCs, as well as documentation requirement in drugs redistribution and storage of thermolabile pharmaceuticals at PHCs.

Others are pharmacovigilance / documentation of adverse drug event from essential drugs used at the PHCs among others.

These courses she said were put together to better position the pharmacy technicians at the health facilities to document all their activities which is proof that they are actually working.

She expressed optimism that at the end of the workshop the pharmacy technicians would be better equipped to carry out their jobs effectively and more efficiently to promote quality health care service delivery to the people.

Responding, a participant at the workshop, Mr. Awaji S. Brown from Orogbum Health Centre who gave assurances of better pharmaceutical services at the primary health centres thanked the Board for organising the programme which aimed at human capacity development and appealed that the training  be done more regularly.