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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When people have concerns over their medications and it takes forever to get in contact with their doctor, people appreciate having someone with 8 years of education that they can go to get advice (retail pharmacy).
Also considering that some medications can cause serious health complications if taken incorrectly or with meds they shouldn’t take together, you want someone who knows their stuff to be the one doing the final “yes this is the correct med in the bottle” or “yes these instructions make sense with this medication”.
Had a patient who needed to go to a different pharmacy for a specific med that was out of stock and they didn’t ask if he took a big one that you shouldn’t take together and he ended up in the hospital. Computer wouldn’t catch that without his med history. Both the prescribing doctor and pharmacist should have asked if he took this specific med also :/
Even people with also that education make mistakes but imagine all the mistakes if say the technician could answer questions that right now only a pharmacist could answer.
The amount of learning I’ve done for being a technician is not enough to feel comfortable with giving anyone medication advice.
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