New Brunswick pharmacy technicians register with the New Brunswick College of Pharmacists: an accredited program or bridging route, PEBC MCQ and OSPE exams, the College jurisprudence exam, and a Structured Practical Evaluation.
Applies in: New Brunswick
Pharmacy technicians in New Brunswick are regulated by the New Brunswick College of Pharmacists, and there is no work-around route: graduate from an accredited program (or bridge across from pharmacy assistant work), register as a student with the College, pass the two national PEBC exams and the College's own jurisprudence exam, complete a Structured Practical Evaluation under a preceptor, then pay the one-time registration fee and hold an active licence.
New Brunswick's route has two features the bigger provinces do not. The jurisprudence exam is the College's own, priced at $293.25 for a regular sitting, and the practical step is called a Structured Practical Evaluation rather than structured practical training. Both are spelled out below.
The standard entry is a pharmacy technician program accredited by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP). That accreditation is the point to check before paying tuition, because the College's registration flowcharts are built around graduates of CCAPP-accredited programs.
Working pharmacy assistants have a second door. New Brunswick Community College offers Pharmacy Technician Bridging courses — Pharmacology, Professional Practice, Management of Product Distribution, and Product Preparation, at $1,100 per course — designed to bring assistants up to the regulatory competencies needed to write the national exams. NBCC describes its courses as an approved pathway with the New Brunswick College of Pharmacists. Admission requires a high school credential and an employer letter confirming a minimum of 2,000 hours worked as a pharmacy assistant in a Canadian pharmacy within the past three years.
On the bridging route, student registration with the College costs a one-time $69. You also need liability insurance to register as a student — NBCC puts it at approximately $75 through a membership with the Canadian Association of Pharmacy Technicians, the New Brunswick Pharmacists' Association, or another provider. If you mail your identification to the College, it must be notarized by a lawyer or a public notary; commissioners of oaths are not accepted for this purpose.
New Brunswick candidates write three exams, and NBCC states plainly that there is no set order for completing them:
After your program, you complete the College's Structured Practical Evaluation (SPE) under a preceptor — a pharmacy technician or pharmacist — in a direct patient-care practice site. There is no fee for the SPE. The College's Structured Practical Evaluation Manual ties the requirement to Regulation 12.19(3)(c): the SPE forms part of a six-week postgraduate training period, and one component requires the student to accurately apply an independent double check to 500 prescriptions, orders or products for final release with 100% accuracy, at a maximum of 50 items per day.
You also need first aid (Emergency, Workplace or Standard) and CPR Level C by the final steps of registration, at roughly $100 depending on the provider.
When the exams and the evaluation are done, you pay the College's one-time registration fee of $358.80 and take out the active pharmacy technician licence, which costs $681.95 a year. Keep the licence active and your liability insurance in place; the title and the regulated scope go with the licence, not with the diploma.
One timing trap from the College's flowcharts: exam and education results go stale. The College's registration flowcharts treat PEBC results and jurisprudence results as current only within set windows after graduation, and graduates who wait years can be sent back for practice hours as a conditional registrant plus continuing education units. Graduate, then move.
The College pages and the NBCC bridging page state the exam, registration and licence fees used above, but they do not publish a single total cost of the full route for a graduate of an in-province CCAPP program, a processing time for a complete registration application, or a wage figure for New Brunswick pharmacy technicians, so this guide gives none of those. The bridging admission figure of 2,000 assistant hours applies to the NBCC bridging courses; the pages do not state an equivalent hours figure for the direct CCAPP route.
The New Brunswick College of Pharmacists. Registration and licensure with the College are what let you use the pharmacy technician title and work in the regulated scope in New Brunswick. The national exams are run separately by the Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada (PEBC).
The standard route is a pharmacy technician program accredited by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP). Experienced pharmacy assistants have a second route: New Brunswick Community College offers bridging courses that the College accepts as an approved pathway, and admission to bridging requires a letter confirming at least 2,000 hours worked as a pharmacy assistant in a Canadian pharmacy within the past three years.
Three. The PEBC Qualifying Exam Part I (multiple choice, $575) and Part II, the Objective Structured Performance Examination or OSPE ($1,215), both offered in September and April, plus the New Brunswick College of Pharmacists jurisprudence exam ($293.25 at a regular sitting, $460 at a special sitting). There is no set order for the three exams. You also complete a Structured Practical Evaluation after your program, which carries no fee.
It is the College's supervised practice assessment, done with a preceptor who is a pharmacy technician or pharmacist in a direct patient-care practice site. Regulation 12.19(3)(c) ties it to a six-week postgraduate training period, and one component requires you to accurately apply an independent double check to 500 prescriptions, orders or products for final release, at 100% accuracy, with a maximum of 50 items per day.
On the bridging route the published figures are a $69 student registration fee, the PEBC exams at $575 and $1,215, the jurisprudence exam at $293.25 for a regular sitting, a $358.80 one-time registration fee once all conditions for licensure are complete, and an annual active licence fee of $681.95. Liability insurance (about $75 through an association membership) and first aid with CPR Level C (about $100) sit on top of that, and tuition is separate.
Yes, at the final steps. First aid (Emergency, Workplace or Standard) and CPR Level C are not needed to register as a student, unless you take an injection certification course, but they are required as part of the final steps in becoming a registered pharmacy technician.