Top 12 Senior Pharmacy Technician Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the competitive field of pharmacy, senior pharmacy technicians need a sharp, credible skill set on their resumes to catch hiring managers’ eyes. The twelve skills below signal mastery, speed, and patient-first care. They show you can keep operations humming while safety stays non-negotiable.
Senior Pharmacy Technician Skills
- Pyxis MedStation
- Cerner Millennium
- Rx30 Pharmacy System
- Compounding Expertise
- Inventory Management
- McKesson Pharmacy Systems
- Epic Willow
- Aseptic Technique
- QS/1 Data Systems
- Medication Reconciliation
- Surescripts Interface
- HIPAA Compliance
1. Pyxis MedStation
Pyxis MedStation is an automated dispensing cabinet (ADC) that secures, tracks, and dispenses medications at the point of care. It reduces errors, tightens inventory control, and speeds up medication access across units.
Why It's Important
It streamlines dispensing, strengthens chain-of-custody, and gives real-time inventory visibility—key for reducing waste, preventing diversion, and supporting fast, accurate patient care.
How to Improve Pyxis MedStation Skills
Stay current: Apply software/firmware updates and review new features; fine-tune settings after each upgrade.
Tighten access controls: Use role-based permissions, periodic access reviews, and alerts for high-risk meds.
Optimize cabinets: Rationalize drawer/slot layouts, use high-density pockets, and group fast-movers for fewer clicks.
Lean workflows: Enable barcode verification, standardize return-to-stock steps, and clear exception queues daily.
Controlled substances discipline: Enforce blind counts, random audits, discrepancy resolution timelines, and witness rules.
Inventory rigor: Set min/max PARs, automate replenishment, run cycle counts, and act on shrink/expiry reports.
Integrate smartly: Ensure clean interfaces with EHR, billing, and ADT feeds to avoid mismatches and duplicate work.
Coach continuously: Short refreshers, quick tips at huddles, and user feedback loops to squash friction.
How to Display Pyxis MedStation Skills on Your Resume
2. Cerner Millennium
Cerner Millennium (now Oracle Health Millennium) is an EHR platform that centralizes orders, medication management, and clinical data. It connects pharmacy workflows to the broader care team in real time.
Why It's Important
It reduces transcription errors, supports clinical decision-making, and aligns pharmacy tasks with bedside care, so orders move cleanly from entry to administration.
How to Improve Cerner Millennium Skills
Personalize PharmNet: Tune order sets, favorites, alerts, and verification queues to match your formulary and throughput.
Strengthen integration: Validate HL7 interfaces with BCMA, ADT, lab, and billing; monitor interface error queues daily.
Safety rules: Calibrate dose range checks and hard/soft stops; prune noisy alerts that mask critical ones.
Formulary discipline: Maintain NDC mapping, substitution rules, and shortage alternatives with clear pharmacist guidance.
Analytics: Track turn-around times, verification backlog, and override patterns; act on the trends, not just the snapshots.
Upskill the team: Short, role-specific refreshers and tip sheets; share lessons from near-misses to harden workflows.
How to Display Cerner Millennium Skills on Your Resume
3. Rx30 Pharmacy System
Rx30 is a community pharmacy platform for prescription processing, patient profiles, inventory, e-prescribing, and reporting—built to move fast without losing accuracy.
Why It's Important
It tightens workflow from intake to pickup, reduces rework, and supports patient programs like synchronization and adherence packaging.
How to Improve Rx30 Pharmacy System Skills
Master the configuration: Customize workflow steps, queue priorities, labels, and alerts to mirror your staffing and volume.
Exploit integrations: Enable eRx, EPCS, immunization registry reporting, DUR, and texting/notifications for fewer phone tags.
Inventory smarts: Activate perpetual inventory, auto-order rules, and shrink/expiry reporting; reconcile wholesaler invoices promptly.
Patient programs: Build med sync calendars, MTM documentation flows, and targeted refill outreach.
Dashboards and audits: Review KPIs weekly—queue aging, third-party rejects, reversal rates—and eliminate recurring pain points.
How to Display Rx30 Pharmacy System Skills on Your Resume
4. Compounding Expertise
The know-how to prepare customized medications safely and precisely—nonsterile and sterile—following master formulations, cleanroom practices, and rigorous documentation.
Why It's Important
Patients need tailored solutions. Accurate technique and compliant processes prevent contamination, dosing errors, and costly remakes.
How to Improve Compounding Expertise Skills
Follow the standards: Align with USP <795>, <797>, and <800> for nonsterile, sterile, and hazardous compounding.
Build strong MFRs: Use validated master formulation records, clear calculations, and batch documentation with full traceability.
Technique that holds: Practice weight/measure accuracy, pH/osmolality checks, mixing order, and visual inspection; verify every step.
Environmental control: Maintain PEC/SEC cleaning logs, pressure differentials, certification schedules, and viable/nonviable monitoring.
Competency testing: Media-fill, gloved fingertip sampling, and ongoing observations; remediate promptly if standards slip.
Right BUDs: Apply stability and risk categories properly; label with beyond-use dating that reflects current guidance.
How to Display Compounding Expertise Skills on Your Resume
5. Inventory Management
Planning, ordering, receiving, storing, and reconciling medications so the right product is on hand—without tying up cash or wasting stock.
Why It's Important
It curbs expiries, prevents stockouts, and trims carrying costs while protecting patient care from supply shocks.
How to Improve Inventory Management Skills
Use the data: Forecast with historical demand, seasonality, and payer mix; set PARs that move with reality.
ABC/FEFO discipline: Classify A/B/C items and pull First-Expire-First-Out to shrink waste on high-value lines.
Perpetual inventory: Barcode receiving, frequent cycle counts, and quick discrepancy resolution—no black boxes.
Supplier strategy: Primary/secondary wholesaler coverage, contract compliance, and fast substitutions during shortages.
Controls and CSOS: Lock down controlled drug workflows, reconcile daily, and keep spotless paper/electronic trails.
Recall readiness: Map NDC lots to patients/units; conduct mock recalls to prove traceability works.
How to Display Inventory Management Skills on Your Resume
6. McKesson Pharmacy Systems
A suite of tools (e.g., EnterpriseRx, Pharmaserv) for prescription processing, inventory, claims, and clinical programs—designed to scale community and health-system pharmacy operations.
Why It's Important
It streamlines dispensing and billing, reduces rejects, and centralizes data needed for safer, faster decisions.
How to Improve McKesson Pharmacy Systems Skills
Workflow tuning: Map steps from intake to pickup; automate status changes, use barcode checks, and clear exceptions early.
Claims finesse: Configure payer rules, real-time DUR, and reject worklists; coach staff on first-pass clean claims.
Inventory automation: Turn on perpetual inventory, auto-orders, and expiry tracking; reconcile wholesaler data nightly.
Clinical add-ons: Enable MTM, immunization documentation, and adherence tools that slot into your daily rhythm.
Integrations: Link to eRx/EPCS, robotics, packaging, and analytics; monitor interface errors like a hawk.
Team training: Role-based quick guides, refreshers after updates, and a place to capture user feedback.
How to Display McKesson Pharmacy Systems Skills on Your Resume
7. Epic Willow
Epic Willow (Inpatient/Ambulatory) powers pharmacy verification, inventory, and medication workflows inside Epic, with tight ties to ordering, BCMA, and revenue capture.
Why It's Important
It connects pharmacy actions to bedside delivery, cutting handoffs and preventing errors while surfacing clinical context when it matters.
How to Improve Epic Willow Skills
SmartTools and preference lists: Build order sets, dose calculators, and shortcuts that remove clicks, not safety.
Formulary governance: Keep NDCs, mappings, and therapeutic interchange rules clean; pre-build shortage alternatives.
Verification flow: Prioritize high-risk orders, split queues by expertise, and measure turn-around times by shift.
BCMA alignment: Tight-check linkages among build, MAR, and scanning; fix the barcodes, eliminate scan failures.
Charge integrity: Validate charge capture, units, and wastage rules—especially for oncology and specialty meds.
Partner with analysts: Log issues clearly, test changes fast, and push for small, frequent improvements.
How to Display Epic Willow Skills on Your Resume
8. Aseptic Technique
Practices that keep preparations sterile and environments controlled, from garbing and airflow discipline to precise manipulations in the hood.
Why It's Important
Sterility failures harm patients. Solid aseptic technique protects product integrity and keeps infections out of the equation.
How to Improve Aseptic Technique Skills
USP alignment: Follow USP <797> and <800> policies to the letter; review and update SOPs routinely.
Garbing and flow: Sequence matters—no shortcuts. Maintain first air, avoid shadowing, and work methodically.
Competency checks: Media-fill tests, gloved fingertip sampling, and direct observation with documented remediation.
Environmental care: Daily/weekly cleaning schedules, surface/air sampling, action limits, and timely corrective actions.
Technique drills: Accurate reconstitution, filter use, line clearance, labeling, and final inspection—repeated until automatic.
Documentation: Batch records complete and legible; lot numbers, expiries, and BUDs unmistakable.
How to Display Aseptic Technique Skills on Your Resume
9. QS/1 Data Systems
QS/1 (now under RedSail Technologies) delivers pharmacy management software for dispensing, claims, inventory, and patient services—built for community and long-term care settings.
Why It's Important
It consolidates daily operations, reduces keystrokes, and raises accuracy while giving you the reporting needed to steer the ship.
How to Improve QS/1 Data Systems Skills
Tailor the workflow: Configure queues, user permissions, and alerts so tasks land with the right person at the right time.
Claims mastery: Build payer-specific rules, work reject queues by priority, and track reversal/rebill reasons to stop repeats.
Inventory rigor: Enable perpetual counts, set auto-order logic, and reconcile wholesaler EDI receipts without delay.
Clinical features: Turn on immunization workflows, med sync, and MTM documentation to capture value beyond dispensing.
Security and audits: Use strong authentication, audit logs, and periodic access reviews; clean up dormant accounts.
Team enablement: Short, targeted trainings after updates; share user tips that shave seconds off common tasks.
How to Display QS/1 Data Systems Skills on Your Resume
10. Medication Reconciliation
A structured process to create the most accurate list of a patient’s medications—comparing what they take with what’s ordered—across every transition of care.
Why It's Important
It prevents omissions, duplications, interactions, and dosing errors. Continuity stays intact when patients move between settings.
How to Improve Medication Reconciliation Skills
Standardize the script: Use a clear, step-by-step protocol for admission, transfer, and discharge—no improvising at crunch time.
Verify with multiple sources: Patient interview, caregivers, pharmacy fill history, PDMP (when appropriate), and EHR notes.
Clarify discrepancies fast: Tackle intentional vs. unintentional differences; escalate unclear items to the pharmacist quickly.
Document cleanly: Time-stamp, source each med, and record changes with the “why”—so the next clinician trusts the list.
Teach the patient: Plain-language instructions and updated med cards at discharge; confirm understanding.
Measure and improve: Track reconciliation completion rates and error types; fix the root causes you see most.
How to Display Medication Reconciliation Skills on Your Resume
11. Surescripts Interface
The Surescripts network enables secure electronic prescribing, eligibility/benefits checks, and electronic prior authorization between prescribers, pharmacies, and payers.
Why It's Important
It cuts phone calls, reduces handwriting errors, accelerates prior auths, and tightens the link between clinic and pharmacy.
How to Improve Surescripts Interface Skills
Clean setup: Configure eRx, EPCS, and provider directories correctly; maintain signer credentials and two-factor tokens.
Standards-savvy: Align with current NCPDP SCRIPT standards; validate message formats and troubleshoot rejects methodically.
Error queue discipline: Work transmission errors and cancellations daily; confirm status to avoid duplicate fills.
Eligibility and formulary: Use real-time benefits and alternatives to reduce patient costs and callback loops.
ePA readiness: Set up and monitor electronic prior authorization workflows; track turnaround times and bottlenecks.
Security posture: Enforce least-privilege access, audit logs, and timely credential revocation; protect PHI rigorously.
How to Display Surescripts Interface Skills on Your Resume
12. HIPAA Compliance
Consistent adherence to privacy and security rules that protect patient health information in every workflow, conversation, and system you touch.
Why It's Important
Trust depends on it. Patients’ data stays safe, penalties are avoided, and your operation runs with quiet confidence.
How to Improve HIPAA Compliance Skills
Train and retrain: Short, frequent sessions on privacy, phishing, workstation hygiene, and incident reporting.
Access control: Role-based permissions, unique logins, MFA where available, and fast removal of inactive accounts.
Secure the tech: Encrypt data in transit/at rest, lock screens automatically, and patch systems without delay.
Audit trails: Review access logs and anomaly reports; investigate and document any irregular access promptly.
Minimum necessary: Share only what’s needed for the task; coach staff to pause before disclosing details.
Incident readiness: Clear breach response plan, contact lists, timelines, and documentation templates—practiced, not theoretical.
Vendor vigilance: Business associate agreements on file; verify third parties meet security expectations.
How to Display HIPAA Compliance Skills on Your Resume
