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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I was considering going into pharmacy, and so I talked to some pharmacists.
Everything that other posters have said is true… but at least a couple of the pharmacists I talked to shared some of your concerns. There were like “You know a lot of stuff… but lots of times none of that matters because what you’re actually doing counting pills and doing inventory and dealing with old people complaining. You effectively do a lot of the same things, and have to interact with the same dumb managers, as the other retail workers at a grocery store”.
You could also own your own pharmacy in some small town, which is apparently the simplest way to make a lot of money. The pharmacist I talked to who owned (three) pharmacies was happy with money, but was candid that lots of his job was just “running a retail store that just had an extra reason that it’s profitable”. So a lot of hiring/firing/managing, and deciding how many snowglobes to order.
Or you could work in a hospital. This was apparently the best way to feel like you’re really using your knowledge and participating in improving health care outcomes. This is the most “being a pharmacist” and the least “being a retail worker/manager”. (I didn’t actually talk to one of these pharmacists, but the other pharmacists mentioned this possibility).
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