pharmacist q?

Question

What exactly does a pharmacist do and how long do they usually have to go to school for?

Answer 1

a pharmacist is the person actually responsible for filling your prescription from a doctor or nurse practioner-- the pharmacist also calls your doctor or cnp who wrote the prescription if you have ANY ALLERGIES to the medicine or components of the medicine then if you do the pharmacist takes a verbal order from the dr or cnp for a different medication a pharmacist usually has about 5-7 years of schooling

Answer 2

The above answer is pretty good, but there's more to it than that. We are basically repositories of knowledge about drugs. We answer people's questions about them, tell them what to look out for when they're on them, help them determine if they're taking any drugs they really don't need, or if any drugs they're taking are interacting with each other. Medical students in take maybe one or two courses in pharmacology, but pharmacy students do several years of in-depth study.

In some states, the trend lately has been for the physician to diagnose the patient, and then consult with a pharmacist to determine which drugs would be appropriate for treatment. Then the pharmacist would actually write the prescription. We've come a long way since being mere pill merchants.

Pharmacy school takes four years if the candidate already has an undergraduate degree, otherwise the complete course is six years, culminating in the degree of Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) According to a recent study published in US News and World Report, pharmacists' average salary is the 19th highest by profession in America. (I'm looking at starting at six figures when I graduate and get licensed.)