Pharmacists : Caring For One's Health

Often medicines were made from herbs, spices and resins. The medicine was applied in drinks, pills, washes, baths, rubs, poultices, purges and ointments. Which sometimes themselves contained fatal ingredients.

Pharmacists are highly educated in the form, uses, and interactions of certain medicines and also in how those medicines affect normal body functions. They keep thorough patient medication records, which contain

As the medical field is growing at a very fast pace, one must always remember that the patient always comes first. After all isn’t helping individuals get healthier in their time of sickness the sole purpose of becoming apart of the medical profession? As a practicing pharmacist, my sole purpose will be to aide all my patient’s needs in whatever way that they need to be assisted in.

Nowadays, medicine is tested and approved before it hits the market. Back in the days a person would pass treatments through word of mouth and could seriously injure or make the disease worse. People in historical times would believe that illnesses involved certain spiritual, psychological and social aspects of a person. This was back in the time where there was no scientific evidence that traditional medicine could aid an affected person. Traditional medicine has been around much longer than modern medicine and they were an important part of recorded history. People back in the old days had to dispel and challenge folklore with scientific evidence. Doctors back in the old days had to not only find a way to dispel folklore, but also get ordinary people to listen to them and to help them believe in their practices. Without all of these people, medicine would be nowhere near as it is

As a clinician in a hospital, the pharmacist becomes a member of a professional healthcare team. In their clinical practice, pharmacists are directly involved in ensuring optimal medical therapy for patients by devising therapeutic regimens specific to individual patients. They also staff the Drug Information and Poison Centers whose task is to provide information to other healthcare professionals to assist with therapeutic decision making (uq, 2012).

With the huge shift in the U.S. healthcare system, healthcare services are now trending towards value-based outcomes.1 With passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it has become increasingly important to improve quality of care while simultaneously reducing health care costs.2 Pharmaceutical care services are one of the key components that has an essential impact on optimizing therapy outcomes; minimizing cost and enhancing quality of life of chronically ill patients. Community pharmacists are the third largest healthcare provider group in the world after physicians and nurses.3 Despite the fact that many studies have shown that community pharmacists’ provision of direct patient care can lead to improved patient outcomes and reduced health care costs. However, community pharmacists are the only health professionals who are not primarily rewarded for delivering health care and hence are under-utilized as public health professionals.3 Community pharmacists could help to improve health by reducing drug-related adverse events and promoting better medication adherence, which in turn may help in reducing unnecessary provider visits, hospitalizations, and readmissions while strengthening primary care delivery across the health system.

“Pharmacist dispense prescription medications to patients.” They also describe the proper way to use the medication. “They also may conduct health and wellness screenings, provide immunizations, oversee the medication given to patients and provide advice on healthy lifestyles.” (bls.gov) some pharmacist specialize in specific drug therapies such as cancer or mental health treatments. (bls.gov)

The way medicine was provided has changed over time. Medicine was limited during this time. The people used home remedies to try and cure many different things. Including a deadly disease that they had no idea what caused it. People affected by this disease would mix up a warm poultice of butter

What does it take to be a pharmacist? Pharmacy involves more than just handing out drugs, otherwise anyone could do it. “A pharmacist is a health professional who follows instruction from physicians regarding the amount of education to distribute” (“Pharmacy requirements”). The pharmacy profession requires a lot of education, demands patience and attentive work, provides good pay, and offers a satisfying job.

The demand for the medical services offered by pharmacists increases every year as the elderly population grows and the number of prescriptions increases to meet their needs. The United States Census Bureau recently found that 1 in 5 Americans will meet the age criteria necessary to be considered elderly. The National Association of Chain Drug Stores projects the growth of filled prescriptions in the United States from 4.1 billion in 2015 to 4.7 billion by 2021. Pharmacists perform a variety of tasks beyond just filling prescriptions, such as researching new drugs, working in hospitals, and writing patents. The high demand for pharmacists provides a wide array of career choices in both the private and public sectors.

There are other pharmacy staff who also have roles in relation to the safe dispensing of medicines. A pharmacist is responsible for: Overall checking of a prescription to make sure that it is legal and written by a person qualified to do so, dispensing the right quantity of the correct medicine, ensuring that medicines are correctly labelled with the person’s name, the name of the medicine and the dosage, providing advice and treatment for minor illnesses, injuries and health concerns, providing a repeat prescription service in co-operation with GP

There are pharmacists that work in totally different fields and their tasks require them to be specialized in different areas of pharmacy. Some of the different types of pharmacists are, Pharmaceutical technicians and Pharmaceutical scientists. Both share a general relation with each other, but they both have major differences according to what they do on a daily basis. Pharmaceutical scientists usually specialize in one aspect of the drug development process. They design new drug remedies using natural or man made ingredients, they study how disease affects the body and what causes some people to develop certain types of disease, study how the human body responds to medications so scientists can develop more efficient, safer drugs,they uncover new ways to use existing drugs to treat different types of disease, they Test drugs on animals and humans to ensure safety and efficiency, determine the most effective formulation and dosage for a specific drug, and advise corporations or government agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, on issues related to pharmaceutical development.(Explore) To become a pharmaceutical scientist, you must have a strong interest in mathematics, biology, and chemistry. In college, you can major in the pharmaceutical sciences, pharmacy, chemistry, biology, engineering, medicine or a related field.(Explore) Pharmacy Technicians work the same hours as pharmacists. This may include evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays. Because some hospital and retail pharmacies are open 24 hours a day, technicians may work varying shifts. As their experience increases, pharmacy technicians often have increased control over the hours they work. There are many opportunities for part-time work in both retail and hospital environments.

They counsel patients on the use of medication, upon a patients release from the hospital. Retail pharmacists help answer questions about over the counter and prescription drugs. They must ask patients certain health questions in order to make a judgment on which medications to prescribe. Some pharmacists specialize in drugs for psychiatric disorders or intravenous nutrition.

Today in the 21st century the roles of pharmacist have expanded tremendously. Before pharmacist had the role of solely dispensing drugs. Pharmacists were limited to only being regulatory or clinical pharmacist. Back then they were called medical purveyors who were much like today’s regulatory pharmacist and hospital pharmacist who are similar to hospital pharmacist. Now pharmacists carry many roles in healthcare. Pharmacist can play roles in public health, community, health systems, state, and federal government.

The field of pharmacy is wide open. There are many different career paths that have to do with pharmacy. There are community, hospital, clinical, compounding, consultant, internet, veterinary, nuclear, and military pharmacies. I will only be discussing community and hospital pharmacies. When most people think of a pharmacy, the first thing that comes to mind is either a Walgreen’s or a CVS. These are excellent examples of a community pharmacy. They are grocery store like in design. They have snacks, shampoo, office supplies, Hallmark cards, over the counter medicine, and prescription drugs all in one convenient location. A pharmacist is required to be there while the store is open (Association, Shall I study Pharmacy).