Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the health science that studies the use of drugs in biological systems. The Pharmacy profession is charged with the safe and effective use of drug therapy. A practitioner of pharmacy is a pharmacist.

A pharmacy is also the location where drugs are dispensed. Pharmacies are located in both the community as a business, or in an institutional setting such as a hospital or nursing home.

Disciplines

Pharmacy is broken into many disciplines and practice areas.

• Pharmacology- how drugs interact with biological systems
• Medicinal Chemistry- how drugs interact with biochemicals, and how drugs are discovered and created
• Pharmaceutics- how drugs dosage forms are made
• Pharmacy Practice- interactions with patients to optimize drug therapy

Within each field, and practitioner of pharmacy can specialize in a number of processes, from specific types of dosage forms, to specific types of diseases (cardiology or infectious disease for example), to specific drug families (examples: ACE inhibitors or fluroquinolones).