<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/1/1611179732999.png" alt="New federal rules aim to help pharmacies give the COVID-19 vaccine to more people faster. Carlos Moreno / KCUR" />
 <figcaption>New federal rules aim to help pharmacies give the COVID-19 vaccine to more people faster. Carlos Moreno / KCUR</figcaption>
 </figure>By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN <a href="https://www.kcur.org/news/2021-01-20/kansas-pharmacies-hire-and-train-more-workers-to-help-rollout-covid-19-vaccines-faster">Kansas News Service</a>Hundreds, potentially thousands, of pharmacy workers could inject vaccines into the arms of Kansans in the coming months.New
 rules, at least for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, now let an 
additional class of workers vaccinate more people faster.Pharmacists could already give shots. But in Kansas, the pharmacy technicians that work alongside them couldn’t.That changed <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/10/21/trump-administration-takes-action-further-expand-access-vaccines-covid-19-tests.html" target="_blank">in the fall</a>
 with new federal regulations that let technicians give vaccinations. A 
few states already allowed that before the pandemic, but many 
pharmacists across the country saw the expanding role of techs as a 
threat to their jobs.As supplies of coronavirus vaccine increase,
 Kansas counts on pharmacies to help get it to the broader public. For 
now, the state remains in <a href="https://www.kansasvaccine.gov/157/Availability" target="_blank">Phase One</a>
 of distribution, focused on health care workers and nursing home 
residents. Drug stores still don’t know when they will receive vaccine 
stock.<h2>Expanding role for techs</h2>Pharmacy techs help manage inventory, fill pill bottles, unpack orders, schedule appointments.Their
 role has come to involve more training and more tasks over the years. 
In 2017, a few dozen technicians in Idaho became the first in the 
country to start giving vaccines. Within half a year they gave <a href="https://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/supplements/2019/march2019/an-update-on-technicians-as-immunizers" target="_blank">1,000 shots</a>.By the time the pandemic hit, <a href="https://www.pharmacist.com/article/pharmacy-technicians-gear-immunize#:~:text=States%20that%20currently%20permit%20pharmacy,Island%2C%20Utah%2C%20and%20Nevada." target="_blank">a handful of states</a> had followed Idaho’s path. The goal was to free up pharmacists from some of their most routine tasks.Pharmacists
 in the retail world are notoriously busy. They struggle to find time 
for the kind of conversations with patients that can tease out important
 health issues before they escalate. In the worst cases, an 
investigation by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> found, excessive workloads can lead to prescription-filling errors.By
 contrast, pharmacists with more time have more conversations with 
patients. That’s when they could learn that a medication has one of 
their customers feeling dizzy, and that another one hasn’t gotten his 
pneumonia shot yet.“If you look at your average pharmacist” in 
retail, Washington State University pharmacotherapy professor Kimberly 
McKeirnan said, “they’re using such a small portion of the education 
that they have.”McKeirnan developed <a href="https://pharmacy.wsu.edu/pharmacy-technician-immunization-training/" target="_blank">the training</a> for the first technicians in Idaho to give immunizations. That led later to a <a href="https://www.pharmacist.com/pharmacy-based-immunization-administration-pharmacy-technicians-0" target="_blank">nationally recognized certification</a> program.<h2>Job market changes</h2>The idea has stoked controversy. In recent years, the increasing ranks of newly minted pharmacists compared to <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/pharmacists.htm#:~:text=in%20May%202019.-,Job%20Outlook,percent%20from%202019%20to%202029." target="_blank">shrinking</a> job opportunities for them alarmed many in the field.<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NSIGxMrdQeojIQtKusz29uyfQr9MhctQamcsiyhHFqc/edit" target="_blank">They warned</a>
 of the toll it would take on career and salary prospects for people who
 spent years in graduate school incurring hefty student debts.Some
 pharmacists worried that simultaneously expanding the role of 
technicians could take the pressure off retailers to hire more 
pharmacists, whose salaries can cost more than three times as much. 
Others embraced the help of technicians with extra training as valuable 
support.McKeirnan notes that technicians must work alongside 
pharmacists, who remain the clinical experts. For pharmacists, she sees a
 chance to get the time they need to work with customers at length. For 
technicians, she sees a door to growth and higher pay.“They kind 
of hit a pay ceiling often at some point,” she said. “And then, maybe 
with the exception of just general cost of living adjustments, there’s 
not room to advance.”In Kansas, the average <a href="https://klic.dol.ks.gov/gsipub/index.asp?docid=795" target="_blank">technician’s pay</a> comes out to about $34,000 a year.It
 remains unclear, though, whether pharmacies in Kansas and elsewhere 
will raise the pay for technicians who complete training to give shots 
or do other new tasks.CVS Health, for example, hasn’t committed 
to raising the pay of its technicians who join the massive immunization 
effort. That company says nearly 10,000 of its technicians have started 
or completed the training.<h2>Preparing for the rollout</h2>That includes more than 50 pharmacy techs for CVS in Kansas, where the chain operates about as many stores.In Lawrence, technician Shawn Yang jumped at the chance to help administer the shots that could help stop this pandemic.“It was an easy decision,” said Yang, who has worked for CVS for six years. “I definitely wanted to get vaccine-certified.”The store where he works already gets loads of phone calls from people wondering how and when they can get immunized.Yang
 sees a chance to help in a way that was previously closed to him. He is
 working through an American Pharmacists Association program that trains
 techs to give shots with pharmacist supervision.Nate Burrell, a 
CVS pharmacist who oversees the pharmacy teams at 18 stores in Kansas 
and Missouri, wants at least two workers with the extra training at each
 of those sites.“We know that they’re going to really be a huge asset,” Burrell said.Drug stores have been on <a href="https://www.kcur.org/news/2020-12-22/coronavirus-vaccines-are-coming-to-nursing-homes-soon-but-family-visits-likely-remain-months-away" target="_blank">a hiring spree</a>
 for months, snapping up more pharmacists, nurses and technicians as 
coronavirus testing rolled out, flu season arrived and clinical trials 
on COVID-19 vaccines progressed.Extra hands proved even more 
important when the federal government turned to pharmacies — primarily 
Walgreens and CVS — to send vaccination teams into <a href="https://www.kcur.org/news/2020-12-22/coronavirus-vaccines-are-coming-to-nursing-homes-soon-but-family-visits-likely-remain-months-away" target="_blank">nursing homes</a>, an effort that started last month (and that some say has <a href="https://khn.org/news/article/cvs-and-walgreens-under-fire-for-slow-pace-of-vaccination-in-nursing-homes/" target="_blank">moved too slowly</a>).In October, CVS alone said it needed an extra 10,000 pharmacy technicians nationwide. That hiring continues.Celia
 Llopis-Jepsen reports on consumer health and education for the Kansas 
News Service. You can follow her on Twitter @celia_LJ or email her at 
celia@kcur.org.

Kan. pharmacies hire, train more workers to speed vaccine rollout