Building a career from the ground up

Cecile Ngai credits her initial job as a part-time assistant at a Montreal-based pharmacy chain with launching her career as both a hospital and community pharmacy technician. She began the assistant job in 2009 while studying for her BSc in biochemistry at Concordia University. Upon completing that degree in 2013, she took a pharmacy technical assistant vocational program at Pearson Adult Career Centre, moving to Winnipeg after graduation. Her experience as an assistant spurred her to complete the NAPRA bridging program at night school while continuing to work full-time. “I knew I was ready to take on more duties, so I pushed myself to complete the PEBC [Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada] exams and in 2019, I became a listed pharmacy technician in Manitoba,” she explains.In 2020, she landed a position in hospital pharmacy while also studying for two leadership certificates: Management and Administration, through the University of Manitoba and Applied Project Management at the University of Winnipeg. “I have a master’s program in mind, but I want to take a year off to rest my exhausted brain first!” she quips.That's not to say the enterprising Ngai has slowed down any. In addition to her job in hospital pharmacy, she works from 16 to 24 hours a month in relief in community pharmacy, where she has more opportunity to interact with patients. “It’s fun; it keeps me on my toes,” she says of the extended hours. She also precepts second-year pharmacy technician students and has participated in mock OSPE exams for students at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology (now moving to RRC Polytechnic) and provided presentations on exam preparation. Not surprisingly, she says time management is “extremely important, as I am always on the go.” On her weekly day off, she has a “no-school policy where I focus on baking and cooking,” which she says is “very therapeutic; it relaxes me and targets creativity.” Twice a year, she travels to visit friends and family. Half of Ngai’s hospital shifts are in the emergency department, where she conducts Best Possible Medication Histories (BPMHs) with patients—the “greatest reward” of her job—“collaborating with various medical staff and being empathetic to every patient’s medical condition by helping them get the best medical history.” Conversely, using the Provincial Digital Medication Record (DPIN) to “guesstimate” medication dosing is not as accurate as obtaining compliance pack information and medical list, and conducting a verbal conversation with the patient, she maintains. For this reason, “we need more government funding across Canadian hospital pharmacies to schedule more pharmacy technicians in ER, surgery, and/or medicine units conducting BPMH seven days a week.”Ngai and her provincial counterparts are frustrated that pharmacy technicians in Manitoba are not licensed—they are “listed.” That means they are not permitted to perform two major tasks in community pharmacy: transferring a prescription and administering injections. She says the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba has been preparing to join the Regulated Health Professions Act, which would allow technicians to become licensed, but it must wait for the provincial health minister to review its case, with no timeline set. Despite that obstacle, Ngai firmly believes pharmacy technicians are valuable team members; in 2025, she wrote a blog for “Canadian Healthcare Network” urging pharmacists to utilize techs to their full scope and noting that “pharmacy technicians can make a big impact on the pharmacy team—whether it’s in a hospital, community, or academic setting.”As for her own professional goals, Ngai aspires to secure a leadership position as a manager or supervisor in a pharmacy or corporate setting, or as part of a pharmacy operations team. To this end, she continues to build the skills she believes are necessary.Ngai takes a page from her own career path when she advises current and future students to work as a pharmacy assistant during their schooling to gain hands-on experience. “I always tell students: ‘to be a good pharmacy technician, you must be a good pharmacy assistant,’ as knowledge, experience and skills are built from the bottom up.”

Building a career from the ground up

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