The following ethical dilemmas explore ethics and standards of conduct for pharmacy technicians.

1. Social networking

You are friends with a few of your workplace colleagues on Facebook. After a difficult day at work, Rekha, a recently qualified pharmacy technician, has posted a comment about one of your patients. Although no names are mentioned, it is obvious to you and your colleagues who she is talking about.

• How would you deal with this situation?

2. Using professional judgement

You have just started work at a new pharmacy as a pharmacy technician. In your first week, you notice the pharmacist cutting the dates off some strips of tablets. When you question the practice, he says he does it if he is using tablets close to their expiry date.

• How would you deal with this situation?

3. Unprofessional colleague

It’s Saturday morning and you are working with the regular pharmacist. When they arrive you detect a hint of alcohol on their breath. You make a joke of it and they say it was a friend’s birthday last night and that they were out for a few beers. However, this not the first time this has happened.

• How would you deal with this situation?

4. Data protection

A regular customer approaches you with a box of tablets she has found in her 15-year-old daughter’s bedroom. She shows you the packet, which is labelled with her daughter’s name. She is quite agitated and demands to know what they are and why her daughter is taking them.

• How would you deal with this situation?