Book excerpt: Filled with practical, hands-on laboratory exercises, this book is an ideal laboratory manual for pharmacy technician education programs. It covers the laboratory skills technicians need to dispense retail prescriptions, inpatient medication orders, I.V. admixtures, and extemporaneous compounds and measure, mix, mold, package, and label medications. Chapters include step-by-step laboratory exercises and pre-lab and post-lab questions to promote critical thinking. Also included are role-playing scenarios to fine-tune students' patient communication skills. An appendix provides instructors with lists of required equipment and chemicals necessary to create a lab.