Becoming a Pharmacy Technician

There are courses to take to become a certified pharmacy technician, but I'm not taking that route.  I've been given the advice multiple times to just buy some books to help study for the exam, and work on it on my own.

The two greatest benefits would be the time and money saved, in taking this approach.  Admittedly though, I did not really do all that much research before deciding to just study on my own.  A quick google search shows me that CSU East Bay offers a course for $1,825, and the the course is self-paced.  So it looks like only one of my assumptions was right, although right by a large margin.

What book to buy?  I went to amazon.com and looked at some reviews, and settled on

- The Pharmacy Technician, 3rd Edition

- The Pharmacy Technician: Workbook & Certification Review, 3rd Edition.

Total cost was about $82.

The books are clearly approved of by the APhA, and have all excellent reviews of 4 and 5 stars.  The other book I considered buying was, Mostby's Review for the PTCB Certification Examination, for $36 dollars, but while the average score was 4 stars, the scores were across all levels.

Here's a quote from one of the 2 star reviews (source):

2). The biggest problem is the abundance of typographical errors. There was contradictory information (eg: a class a balance has a minimum accuracy at 6mg...then, a few dozen pages later it says it is accurate at 120mg.....then a few dozen pages after that it is explained that there are several types of class A balances with different accuracy ranges). Forget about scoring yourself on the practice tests.....answers are coded improperly (you selected B, the answer guide says C is correct but the explanation clearly indicates that B is the right choice). Well, if you only double check the answers you got wrong and found these errors, how do you know if you actually got all of the other ones correct without verifying all of them (there are apprx. 1200 questions in the book - pay me and I'll edit the answers). There were even questions asked in the practice tests that did not match the answers given at all (which drug would you use to treat chronic pain? the choices were all hypertension drugs). There was also a question on a practice test that in no way, shape or form matched these answer - it was an entirely different question.

That scared me away a bit, although there are enough good reviews that I may consider it later.  But first I'll finish going through the ones that I have before considering getting a second book to study from.

The books contain 17 chapters with the standard problem types of matching, multiple choice, true/false, and short answer for use in studying, as well as a practice exam.  I've only just gotten started with the book, but it seems pretty decent so far.

We'll see how fast I can get through this, because I want to be certified as soon as possible, which I have in my head at about a month.  Without knowing the material in the books, that's a very tentative date.