What do pharmacists do?
I know pharmacists dispense medication and find any prescription errors I’m just confused as to why they have to go through 8 years of school to do that. I was recently able to shadow a pharmacist and it seems as if the computer will alert the pharmacist if a medication prescription has an error in it. It also seems like the pharmacy techs are also able to count pills and because the computer flags any prescription errors the pharmacy tech could probably also fix any errors.
However I’m sure pharmacists do more than what I saw in my couple of hours of shadowing I’m just not sure what else they do. It would be kind of messed up if they went through 8 years of school just to count pills and have a computer do the rest so I imagine a pharmacist has responsibilities that goes beyond that.
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Just to add different perspective to all the other answers.
I’m an anesthesiologist. I’m pretty much the only type of professional who prescribes, dispenses, *and* administers medicines. I figured out what the patient needs and just pull it out and give it to them. On top of that, I need to understand and work with *every* medicine a patient might be on, at home or in the hospital, because of all the other stuff I’m doing to them for the whole anesthesia thing.
In that respect, I have to be an expert on a *lot* of different aspects of a *lot* of different medicines.
Even still, pharmacists know *so much more* about medications than I do that it’s *ridiculous*. They’re the people I go to with questions about interaction, dosages, dosing adjustments, and indications.
Pharmacists are the bomb.
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