Introduction to Pharmacy.

Pharmacy is actually derived from a greek word “pharmakon” which means “drug or medicine”. It may also be defined as the study of medicines or the profession whick deals with the drugs and medicines.in pharmacy a person studies about the art and science of preparing, compounding, dispensing and storage of medines.

Now a question arises that what is the difference between drug and a medicine???

A drug is actually the pure form and when a drug is treated with the some chemicals then it is called a medicine.

The chemical form of a drug is called medicine.

The drugs or medicines are supplied to the patient in the form of DOSAGE FORM.

PHARMACIST: a person who has qualified a five year degree of doctor of pharmacy. A pharmacist is also defined as “a person who is the only expert in drugs” or “a person who knows all about the drugs”. The HEALTH PROFESSIONAL TEAM includes a physician, a nurse, a pharmacist, and a veterinarian. Without a pharmacist, the health professional team is incomplete…

EDUCATION IN PHARMACY

Programs in pharmacy:

D-PHARM: diploma in pharmacy (one year program).
B-PHARM: bachelor in pharmacy (four year program). Offered in past but now has been cancelled.
PHARM-D: doctor of pharmacy (five year program). Now Offered all over the world.
M-PHIL: masters in the respective subject (pharmacology, pharmacognosy, pharmaceutics, etc etc) (two year program)

And then further higher studies like PH-D…

SCOPE OF PHARMACY

Pharmacy has a large scope all over the world. It includes following:

```
 HOSPITAL PHARMACY
```
```
 COMMUNITY PHARMACY
```
```
 CLINICAL PHARMACY
```
```
 FORENSIC PHARMACY
```
```
 INDUSTRIAL PHARMACY
```

1)In hospital pharmacy, a person works in the hospitals under the supervision of highly qualified and professionally competent pharmacist who teaches them about different aspect of drugs which are involved in the drug manufacturing and dealing.

DUTIES OF A HOSPITAL PHARMACIST:

The duties of a hospital pharmacist includes:

Preparing, dispensing, compounding, pharmacological actions, preservation of drugs or medicines, storage and standardization of drugs or medicines.

DISPENSING: preparation and immediate supply of drugs or medicines to the patients.

COMPOUNDING: preparation and then storage of drugs until patients needs them.

STANDARDIZATION: categorization of drugs (arranging the medicines or drugs on the basis of different categories).

2)in community pharmacy,a pharmacist directly sales the drugs in community. It includes two types which are as follows:

Retail pharmacy
wholesale pharmacy

In retail pharmacy the pharmacist runs a medical store. He gives the medicines either on a doctor’s prescription or he may directly sale them. a pharmacist may be the owner of that medical store or hr may work as an employ.

While in wholesale pharmacy, different industries supply the medicines to the wholesale pharmacist and then he supplies them to the retail pharmacist for further sale. We can also say that wholesale pharmacy is intermediate between retail pharmacy and industrial pharmacy.

in clinical pharmacy, the pharmacist works in clinics for the serving of mankind. The can make their own clinic or they can work as an employ.
forensic pharmacy is actually the study of drug laws. a pharmacist can also work as a forensic pharmacist in the drug courts etc.

A pharmacist can work as a drug inspector on following posts:

```
 Tehsil drug inspector
```
```
 District drug inspector
```
```
 Divisional drug inspector etc.
```
in industrial pharmacy, the pharmacist works in the industries and prepare the medicines. they can work in private industries or they can work in government industries.

DUTIES OF AN INDUSTRIAL PHARMACIST:

An industrial pharmacist should know all about the drugs. He should know how to make the following medicines. For that purpose, he should know the chemicals and apparatus required for preparation of medicines and then he should know the procedure and precautions of preparing the dosage form. At the end of preparation of drugs, he should know that how he should write the results and how the final dosage form should look like? He should know its appearance, smell, taste and color.

This was all about the scope of pharmacy all over the world…