When I was younger I didn’t want to be a pharmacist, I wanted to be a doctor. I never even thought about becoming a pharmacist until the opportunity for me to return to school came. For me to be accepted into the program I am in, I had to pick three possible careers I would be interested in and research on each of them. One of the positions I decided to look into was a pharmacist. After doing a lot of research and submitting my information to my Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor at the Veterans Affairs, I was approved to begin working towards getting my PharmD, which is a doctorate of Pharmacy. Becoming a pharmacist is a long educational process, but it has a lot of potential for growth and earnings in the coming years.
A pharmacist is a healthcare professional who dispenses drugs to patients that have a prescription ordered by a physician or other clinician. Pharmacists have to have a great understanding of drugs and how they interact with humans and also how drugs interact with each other. They have to accurately fill medication request and make sure that a person is not taking another drug that may negatively interact with the medication they are giving them. A pharmacist also needs to be able to educate a person on the medication they are going to be taking, so the person takes the right dose at the right time, and so they don’t mix it with other drugs that may have harmful side effects.
There are three different types of pharmacist. You have your retail pharmacist, the one you will see working at your local big chain pharmacy, like CVS or Wal-Mart. Their basic job is to get prescriptions filled as quickly as they can. They also have to deal with insurance and making sure it will be covered for the patients. If it is not covered they then have to deal with the unhappy patient waiting for their prescripbtion. Within this segment you have large chain retail pharmacist, such as at CVS, and you also have the private pharmacist that owns his own...