Top 12 Pharmacy Technician Instructor Skills to Put on Your Resume
A standout resume for a Pharmacy Technician Instructor leans on a sharp mix of technical know‑how and teaching savvy. Showcase skills that prove you understand modern pharmacy practice and know how to coach future technicians toward safe, confident performance.
Pharmacy Technician Instructor Skills
- Pyxis MedStation
- QS/1 Data Systems
- Pharmacology Expertise
- Compounding Techniques
- Inventory Management
- Rx30 Pharmacy System
- HIPAA Compliance
- Aseptic Technique
- Prescription Processing
- Cerner Millennium
- Medication Dispensing
- Epic Willow
1. Pyxis MedStation
Pyxis MedStation (BD Pyxis) is an automated medication dispensing system that secures, tracks, and helps safely deliver medications while tightening inventory control and supporting clinical workflows.
Why It's Important
It bolsters medication safety, trims errors, and speeds up nursing and pharmacy workflows—vital for tight operations and reliable patient care.
How to Improve Pyxis MedStation Skills
Focus on efficiency, accuracy, and teaching value:
Keep software current: Update routinely to gain safety features, fixes, and security hardening.
Role‑based training: Build tiered lessons for new users, super‑users, and auditors; practice common scenarios and rare edge cases.
Inventory discipline: Standardize par levels, cycle counts, and FEFO usage; audit high‑risk meds frequently.
Tighten access controls: Use strong authentication, unique IDs, and clear permission sets with audit trails.
Simulation labs: Run scenario‑based drills (e.g., override use, discrepancy resolution, after‑hours dispensing).
Feedback loops: Collect user input and discrepancy trends; revise workflows and training promptly.
Do this well and the system turns into a teaching tool that mirrors real‑world speed and safety.
How to Display Pyxis MedStation Skills on Your Resume
2. QS/1 Data Systems
QS/1 (a RedSail Technologies brand) provides pharmacy management software for prescription processing, inventory, e‑prescribing, third‑party billing, and compliance—tools common across community and long‑term care settings.
Why It's Important
Mastery streamlines workflow, boosts accuracy, and prepares students for platforms widely used in practice.
How to Improve QS/1 Data Systems Skills
Track releases: Teach using current features, hotfixes, and configuration options.
Hands‑on labs: Build simulations for intake, DUR checks, billing rejections, and refill sync.
Scenario variety: Include prior auths, compound entries, LTC cycle fills, and controlled‑substance workflows.
Peer exchange: Discuss common pain points and shortcuts with other educators and working technicians.
Iterate with feedback: Survey learners; refine labs where confusion clusters.
How to Display QS/1 Data Systems Skills on Your Resume
3. Pharmacology Expertise
Deep knowledge of how drugs work—mechanisms, kinetics, interactions, adverse effects, and therapeutic use—applied to safe dispensing, counseling, and interprofessional communication.
Why It's Important
It underpins sound decision‑making, accurate checks, and credible instruction. Students learn to spot risks early and act with confidence.
How to Improve Pharmacology Expertise Skills
Continuous education: Pursue CE, advanced modules, and case‑based updates on new therapies.
Journal habit: Read current pharmacology and practice literature; summarize key changes for learners.
Professional networks: Engage with organizations such as AAPT and local/state pharmacy groups.
Simulation and cases: Use drug‑interaction drills, contraindication puzzles, and patient scenarios.
Collaborate: Partner with pharmacists and clinicians for guest lectures and real‑world case reviews.
Ed‑tech: Leverage quizzes, visual pathways, and spaced‑repetition tools to cement knowledge.
How to Display Pharmacology Expertise Skills on Your Resume
4. Compounding Techniques
Preparing personalized medications—creams, solutions, capsules, sterile and non‑sterile—through precise measurement, mixing, and documentation, aligned with standards and patient needs.
Why It's Important
Accuracy and rigor here directly affect safety, stability, and therapeutic success, especially when no commercial product fits.
How to Improve Compounding Techniques Skills
Measurement mastery: Calibrate scales, verify volume devices, and practice beyond‑use dating calculations.
Know your excipients: Teach compatibility, solubility, beyond‑use dating, and allergen avoidance.
Aseptic discipline: For sterile work, enforce proper garbing, hand hygiene, and hood technique consistent with USP standards.
Regulatory alignment: Keep current with USP compounding chapters and state board requirements.
Document hard: Standardize formulas, MFRs, and compounding records with clear lot tracking.
Deliberate practice: Run timed labs for capsules, ointment levigation, suspensions, and filter sterilization.
How to Display Compounding Techniques Skills on Your Resume
5. Inventory Management
Systematic control of medication and supply levels to ensure availability, curb waste, and support budget and compliance goals.
Why It's Important
Right drug, right amount, right time. Fewer stockouts, less expiration waste, stronger cash flow, better care.
How to Improve Inventory Management Skills
Automate tracking: Use a pharmacy system with real‑time counts, reorder points, and barcode verification.
FEFO first: Organize and dispense by first‑expire‑first‑out; audit short‑dated items weekly.
Cycle counts: Schedule rotating counts and reconcile variances quickly, especially for controlled substances.
Optimize storage: Label zones clearly, separate look‑alike/sound‑alike items, and maintain temperature logs.
Lean ordering: Tie orders to usage trends and seasonality; align with payer and wholesaler constraints.
Team training: Teach ISMP‑aligned safety practices and loss‑prevention basics.
How to Display Inventory Management Skills on Your Resume
6. Rx30 Pharmacy System
Rx30 is a pharmacy management platform (within RedSail Technologies) that supports prescription processing, inventory, e‑prescribing, insurance billing, workflow, and reporting across community settings.
Why It's Important
Students encounter it widely. Learning Rx30 workflows builds speed and precision in dispensing, documentation, and claims handling.
How to Improve Rx30 Pharmacy System Skills
Structured labs: Create mock intakes, new prescriptions, refills, transfers, and claim reversals with realistic data.
Error drills: Practice DUR interventions, NDC mismatches, adjudication rejections, and eRx clarifications.
Customize views: Teach queue configuration, alerts, and shortcuts tailored to common use cases.
Feedback channel: Gather trainee notes on friction points; refine lab design and settings.
Stay current: Fold new feature releases and security updates into your curriculum promptly.
How to Display Rx30 Pharmacy System Skills on Your Resume
7. HIPAA Compliance
Adherence to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requirements for safeguarding protected health information (PHI) through policies, training, and technical safeguards.
Why It's Important
Protects patient privacy, prevents costly breaches, and anchors trust—legal duty and ethical baseline.
How to Improve HIPAA Compliance Skills
Routine training: Run pharmacy‑specific privacy and security scenarios and document completion.
Policy maintenance: Keep administrative, physical, and technical safeguards current and accessible.
Risk analysis: Perform at least annual risk assessments; remediate vulnerabilities with timelines.
Access control: Enforce least‑privilege access, strong authentication, and automatic logoff.
Secure communications: Encrypt PHI in transit and at rest; standardize on approved channels.
Incident response: Maintain a breach response plan with roles, timelines, and notification steps; drill it.
Monitor updates: Track regulatory guidance and state privacy laws that intersect with HIPAA.
How to Display HIPAA Compliance Skills on Your Resume
8. Aseptic Technique
A set of sterile practices—environment control, garbing, hand hygiene, and manipulations—to keep compounded sterile preparations free from contamination.
Why It's Important
Contamination risks are unforgiving. Proper technique protects patients and upholds standards for sterile compounding.
How to Improve Aseptic Technique Skills
Teach the “why”: Ground learners in microbiology basics and contamination routes.
USP‑aligned practice: Follow current USP sterile compounding standards in labs and assessments.
Cleanroom discipline: Validate garbing, gloving, and hood movements; use media‑fill testing and fingertip sampling.
Environment control: Maintain logs for airflow, pressure differentials, cleaning, and temperature.
Technique coaching: Emphasize first‑air, proper swabbing, and minimal turbulence; correct in real time.
Continuous monitoring: Trend error types and retrain where issues recur.
How to Display Aseptic Technique Skills on Your Resume
9. Prescription Processing
End‑to‑end handling of medication orders—intake, interpretation, data entry, verification support, adjudication, filling, and patient handoff—with safety checks throughout.
Why It's Important
It’s where accuracy meets speed. Strong processes prevent errors and delays while keeping patients safe.
How to Improve Prescription Processing Skills
Map the workflow: Standardize steps from intake to pickup; post visual cues; eliminate rework.
Leverage tech: Use eRx, refill sync, barcode validation, and alerts to cut manual slips.
Communication drills: Practice prescriber clarifications and patient confirmations; script high‑risk conversations.
Law and policy refreshers: Keep state law, controlled‑substance rules, and documentation requirements fresh.
Quality checks: Build double‑checks for look‑alike/sound‑alike items, high‑alert meds, and pediatric doses.
How to Display Prescription Processing Skills on Your Resume
10. Cerner Millennium
Oracle Health Millennium (formerly Cerner Millennium) is a widely used electronic health record platform that integrates medication ordering, verification, dispensing workflows, and administration records across care settings.
Why It's Important
Familiarity with EHR‑pharmacy integration—orders, verification queues, MARs—prepares students for real clinical environments and safer handoffs.
How to Improve Cerner Millennium Skills
Role‑specific training: Build pharmacy‑tech curricula with simulations, step‑by‑step tasks, and assessments.
Workflow tuning: Mirror local policies for formulary preferences, substitution rules, and alert thresholds.
Use analytics: Review turnaround times, error trends, and override patterns; teach students to read the story behind the data.
Interoperability awareness: Discuss how the EHR exchanges data with dispensing cabinets, compounding systems, and eRx networks.
Community learning: Engage with Oracle Health user groups to trade tips, pitfalls, and curriculum ideas.
Feedback and iteration: Capture learner and preceptor feedback to refine scenarios and tip sheets.
How to Display Cerner Millennium Skills on Your Resume
11. Medication Dispensing
The safe preparation, packaging, and delivery of prescribed medications with final checks, counseling support, and full regulatory compliance.
Why It's Important
It’s the last guardrail before the patient takes the medication. Precision here prevents harm and improves outcomes.
How to Improve Medication Dispensing Skills
Smart automation: Use barcode scanning, automated counting, and cabinet integrations to reduce slips.
Standard work: Write clear SOPs for intake, filling, verification support, and handoff.
Safety practices: Apply ISMP guidance for high‑alert meds and look‑alike/sound‑alike segregation.
QC checkpoints: Employ double‑checks, image verification, and lot/expiration capture where appropriate.
Patient education: Train technicians to reinforce directions, timing, storage, and when to seek help.
Ongoing development: Encourage CE and certification (e.g., PTCB) to keep skills sharp.
How to Display Medication Dispensing Skills on Your Resume
12. Epic Willow
Epic Willow is Epic’s pharmacy module supporting medication ordering, dispensing, inventory, and safety checks integrated with the broader EHR.
Why It's Important
It connects the pharmacy to the full patient record and care team, anchoring safe, efficient medication use. Training on Willow gives students real‑world fluency.
How to Improve Epic Willow Skills
Foundation first: Teach core navigation, order workflows, verification support, and inventory basics.
Formal training: Incorporate vendor‑aligned education and certification paths where available.
UserWeb and community: Participate in Epic communities and dig into build notes, tip sheets, and best practices.
Practice reps: Use simulated patients and orders; run drills for order corrections, substitutions, and holds.
Stay updated: Fold release‑note changes into labs quickly so learners see the current system, not last year’s.
Collect feedback: Adjust labs based on student stumbling points and preceptor observations.
How to Display Epic Willow Skills on Your Resume
