Top 12 Staff Pharmacist Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today's job hunt, a sharp staff pharmacist resume does heavy lifting. It signals clinical judgment, steady hands with technology, and people skills that actually move the needle. Show the mix: technical fluency, collaboration, safety-minded habits, and a grounded grasp of how meds flow through real care settings. That’s the currency employers read fast.

Staff Pharmacist Skills

1. Pyxis MedStation
2. Cerner Millennium
3. Epic Willow
4. Rx30 Pharmacy System
5. Medication Therapy Management
6. Pharmacokinetics Analysis
7. IV Admixtures
8. Compounding Techniques
9. Drug Utilization Review
10. Patient Counseling
11. Immunization Delivery
12. Anticoagulation Monitoring

1. Pyxis MedStation

Pyxis MedStation is an automated dispensing system that tightens control of meds on the floor, speeds access, and tracks where inventory goes. Pharmacists get secure access, audit trails, and cleaner handoffs with nursing.

Why It's Important

It shrinks dispensing errors, improves med security, and trims waste. Inventory gets smarter. Nurses get what they need faster. Patients stay safer.

How to Improve Pyxis MedStation Skills

Sharpen safety and flow. Make the cabinet work for you, not the other way around:

1. Regular training: Short refreshers, role-based tips, and quick drills when features change.

2. Inventory tuning: Right-size par levels, remove dead stock, and tag critical meds for alerts.

3. Role-based access: Tight permissions and clean user lists cut noise and risk.

4. Feedback loops: Pharmacist–nurse huddles to flag overrides, bin mix-ups, and timing snags.

5. System integration: Link with the EHR and pharmacy system so orders, dispenses, and returns reconcile cleanly.

6. Maintenance cadence: Firmware updates, bin checks, barcode verification, and audit reviews on a schedule.

Dial in these levers and the cabinet becomes a quiet, reliable part of care.

How to Display Pyxis MedStation Skills on Your Resume

2. Cerner Millennium

Cerner Millennium (now often branded as Oracle Health Millennium) is a full EHR platform. The pharmacy stack covers ordering, verification, clinical decision support, dispensing workflows, and MAR documentation—so pharmacists can see the whole picture and act faster.

Why It's Important

Real-time data meets safe ordering. Allergy checks, dose ranges, renal flags, duplications—the system tees up risks before they hit patients. Workflows become less clicky, more deliberate.

How to Improve Cerner Millennium Skills

Trim friction and amplify safety:

1. Workflow customization: Tailor order screens, queue views, and preference lists to cut steps and spotlight high-risk meds.

2. Decision support: Tune alerts for signal over noise. Build guardrails for dosing, kinetics, and interactions that matter.

3. Targeted training: Short, role-specific sessions and tip sheets for new features. Shadowing works wonders.

4. Analytics: Use operational dashboards (e.g., PowerChart Analytics) to spot bottlenecks, turnaround times, and error patterns.

5. Feedback channel: Log pain points, track fixes, and share quick wins with IT and super users.

6. Interoperability: Keep interfaces clean with pharmacy automation, ADCs, and external hubs so orders and dispenses reconcile without manual patchwork.

Get the build right and pharmacists spend time on clinical decisions, not screens.

How to Display Cerner Millennium Skills on Your Resume

3. Epic Willow

Epic Willow is Epic’s pharmacy module—order verification, dispense logic, safety checks, and med administration all under one roof. It lets pharmacists route work, enforce rules, and keep clinical context in view.

Why It's Important

Cleaner orders, fewer misses, tighter communication with the care team. Patient safety climbs when Willow is humming.

How to Improve Epic Willow Skills

Learn, build, practice, repeat:

1. Formal training: Complete role-based education and refreshers. Master the shortcuts and smart tools.

2. Hands-on practice: Sandbox scenarios, mock go-lives, and paired shifts with super users.

3. Stay current: Track release notes and new Willow features. Small tweaks often save big time.

4. Peer networks: Swap tips with other Willow users; share build patterns that reduce clicks and errors.

5. Optimization: Build smartlists, order sets, BPAs, and filters that mirror your clinical reality.

Proficiency shows up as fewer overrides, quicker turns, and safer meds.

How to Display Epic Willow Skills on Your Resume

4. Rx30 Pharmacy System

Rx30 is a community pharmacy platform for prescription processing, patient profiles, clinical services, claims, inventory, and reporting. It smooths front-end to back-office so pharmacists can spend time with patients, not busywork.

Why It's Important

It speeds fills, reduces errors, and supports clinical services like immunizations and MTM—all while keeping inventory and claims in check.

How to Improve Rx30 Pharmacy System Skills

Make the software match your pharmacy’s rhythm:

1. Tailor workflows: Customize queues, defaults, and labels. Strip out steps that don’t add safety or value.

2. Use clinical modules: Document MTM, vaccinations, and adherence programs inside the system to keep a single source of truth.

3. Ongoing training: Short, recurring sessions when new features drop. Create quick reference guides.

4. Inventory discipline: Tight cycle counts, reorder points, returns processing, and shrink monitoring.

5. Patient communications: Activate reminders, two-way texting, and pickup workflows to boost adherence.

6. Data protection: Schedule encrypted backups and verify restore procedures. Test them, don’t just hope.

7. Feedback and iteration: Collect staff input weekly and adjust settings to remove friction.

Small optimizations compound into faster, safer dispensing.

How to Display Rx30 Pharmacy System Skills on Your Resume

5. Medication Therapy Management

Medication Therapy Management (MTM) is pharmacist-led care to optimize outcomes across a patient’s full regimen—prescription, OTC, supplements, and more. Identify problems, resolve them, and keep therapy on target.

Why It's Important

MTM reduces adverse events, lifts adherence, and lines up therapy with evidence and patient goals. It’s where clinical expertise meets real life.

How to Improve Medication Therapy Management Skills

Level up the clinical and the human:

1. Stay current: Track new therapies and guidelines through trusted clinical resources and continuing education.

2. Leverage technology: Use EHR/pharmacy systems to flag gaps in care, sync meds, and document interventions.

3. Communication craft: Clear, plain-language counseling; motivational interviewing; teach-back methods.

4. Patient-centered plans: Tailor goals to comorbidities, budgets, and daily routines. One size never fits.

5. Credentialing and training: Pursue certifications aligned with MTM and pharmacotherapy to deepen scope and credibility.

Better conversations, cleaner regimens, safer patients.

How to Display Medication Therapy Management Skills on Your Resume

6. Pharmacokinetics Analysis

Pharmacokinetics (PK) examines how drugs move—absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion. Pharmacists use PK to tailor doses, time therapy, and avoid toxicity, especially in special populations.

Why It's Important

Right dose, right interval, right patient. PK links lab data and physiology to practical dosing that actually works.

How to Improve Pharmacokinetics Analysis Skills

Sharper math, better tools, stronger application:

1. Continuing education: Study current PK methods, from Bayesian dosing to physiologically based modeling.

2. Software and calculators: Use validated tools (e.g., PKSolver, Simcyp, clinical dosing platforms) and document assumptions.

3. Collaborate: Partner with clinical teams to align PK recommendations with disease states and lab timing.

4. Literature chops: Critically appraise PK studies and translate findings to patient care.

5. Practice routinely: Build protocols for vancomycin, aminoglycosides, antiepileptics, and narrow-therapeutic-index meds.

Consistency and documentation are everything.

How to Display Pharmacokinetics Analysis Skills on Your Resume

7. IV Admixtures

IV admixtures are sterile preparations for intravenous use—precise doses, aseptic technique, and meticulous verification. Pharmacists prepare, check, and oversee compounding to keep sterility and accuracy intact.

Why It's Important

Tailored dosing, minimal contamination risk, and reliable delivery for critical therapies. One missed step can ripple through patient outcomes.

How to Improve IV Admixtures Skills

Sterility, standardization, and scrutiny:

1. Education and competency: Routine media fills, glove fingertip testing, and documented competencies.

2. Standardize: Clear SOPs, master formulas, labels with beyond-use dates, and barcoding where possible.

3. Technology: Closed-system transfer devices, automated compounders, gravimetric and photo verification when available.

4. Quality assurance: Independent double-checks, lot/batch tracking, excursions logs, and deviation reviews.

5. Environment: Comply with current USP <797> standards and hazardous drug requirements under USP <800>.

6. Team communication: Daily checks with nursing on stability, timing, and line compatibility.

Safe compounding is disciplined, repeatable, and audited.

How to Display IV Admixtures Skills on Your Resume

8. Compounding Techniques

Compounding personalizes therapy—mixing, altering, or combining ingredients to fit a patient’s exact needs when commercial options miss the mark.

Why It's Important

It opens doors for unique strengths, dosage forms, and excipient considerations. Patients get what works for them, not just what exists.

How to Improve Compounding Techniques Skills

Precision and process, every time:

1. Continuous learning: Expand skills with structured training and practice labs; keep logs of compounded preparations and outcomes.

2. Follow standards: Align with USP <795> (nonsterile), USP <797> (sterile), and USP <800> (hazardous).

3. Measurement accuracy: Calibrated equipment, validated techniques, and tight tolerance checks.

4. Peer review: Second checks for calculations, process, and final product appearance.

5. Quality systems: Documented MFRs, batch records, stability references, and complaint tracking.

6. Safety: Proper PPE, engineering controls, and spill/cleanup protocols for hazardous drugs.

Compounding quality is built, not guessed.

How to Display Compounding Techniques Skills on Your Resume

9. Drug Utilization Review

Drug Utilization Review (DUR) evaluates whether therapy is appropriate, effective, and safe—before dispensing and throughout care.

Why It's Important

It prevents missteps: interactions, duplications, contraindications, dosing errors. DUR is a core safety net in daily practice.

How to Improve Drug Utilization Review Skills

Turn insight into outcomes:

1. Stay informed: Monitor new approvals, warnings, guideline updates, and high-alert meds.

2. Use robust references: Standardize on comprehensive drug databases and embed checks in your workflow.

3. Collaborate: Discuss findings with prescribers; propose safer or more cost-effective options backed by evidence.

4. Educate patients: Clarify directions, side effects, and self-monitoring to reduce misuse.

5. CQI programs: Track DUR interventions, analyze trends, and refine policies to reduce repeat issues.

Good DUR is proactive, documented, and shared across the team.

How to Display Drug Utilization Review Skills on Your Resume

10. Patient Counseling

Pharmacist counseling translates complex therapy into clear, actionable steps—how to take it, what to expect, when to worry, and how to stick with it.

Why It's Important

Better understanding drives adherence, spots side effects early, and reduces trips back to the hospital. It’s safety wrapped in conversation.

How to Improve Patient Counseling Skills

Be clear, kind, and specific:

1. Communication skills: Plain language, teach-back, and empathy. Read the room and adjust tone.

2. Keep knowledge fresh: Update counseling points for new meds and indications. Practice concise explanations.

3. Personalize: Fit directions to a patient’s routines, barriers, and beliefs. One actionable step beats ten vague ones.

4. Invite questions: Pause, listen, and normalize uncertainty.

5. Use visuals: Simple diagrams, calendars, device demos, and translated materials where needed.

6. Follow up: Quick check-ins for adherence and side effects—phone, text, or portal messages.

Great counseling feels effortless to the patient. It’s anything but.

How to Display Patient Counseling Skills on Your Resume

11. Immunization Delivery

Immunization delivery covers vaccine assessment, storage and handling, administration, documentation, and education—end to end.

Why It's Important

Vaccines protect communities, reduce complications, and keep healthcare systems from overflowing. Pharmacists are often the most accessible vaccinators.

How to Improve Immunization Delivery Skills

Make access easy and quality airtight:

1. Know the schedules: Stay aligned with current ACIP/CDC recommendations and state scope rules.

2. Streamline workflow: Dedicated areas, clear screening forms, appointment options plus walk-ins, and rapid consent processes.

3. Cold-chain integrity: Continuous temperature monitoring, backup plans, and documented handling procedures.

4. Outreach: Proactive reminders, targeted campaigns for high-risk groups, and community events.

5. Leverage tech: Use EHR/registry reporting, inventory tracking, and automated follow-ups for series completion.

6. Train and drill: Annual competencies, anaphylaxis response practice, and lot/recall drills.

Fast, safe, and friendly—that’s the trifecta.

How to Display Immunization Delivery Skills on Your Resume

12. Anticoagulation Monitoring

Anticoagulation monitoring means tracking safety and efficacy for warfarin and direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs). For warfarin: INRs, dose adjustments, diet and interactions. For DOACs: renal/hepatic function, adherence, peri-procedural planning, and interaction checks.

Why It's Important

It balances bleeding and clotting risk—getting patients in range and keeping them there.

How to Improve Anticoagulation Monitoring Skills

Structure and vigilance:

1. Guideline alignment: Use current evidence for VTE, AFib, and mechanical valve management. Refresh annually.

2. Standardized protocols: Dosing nomograms, hold/bridge plans, and reversal strategies that are easy to follow.

3. Technology: Tracking tools for INR trends, time-in-therapeutic-range (TTR), and DOAC renal dosing alerts.

4. Team collaboration: Tight communication with prescribers and nurses; shared documentation of plan changes.

5. Patient engagement: Education on adherence, diet, OTC/herbal interactions, sick-day rules, and what to do if a dose is missed.

The best programs are predictable, fast to adjust, and crystal clear to patients.

How to Display Anticoagulation Monitoring Skills on Your Resume