What does a pharmacist do?do they give medicine or prepare medicine?
In actuality, pharmacists do a little of both – most people perceive the pharmacist’s job as to simply take things from ‘big bottles’ and put them into the little bottles. However, there is an important area of pharmacy referred to as ‘compounding’ – this is where the pharmacist prepares a custom dose/dosage form/application of a medication that your doctor wants for you. For example, children may not be able to handle swallowing a specific tablet, and no solution/suspensions are commercially made. Your pharmacist will take either stock preparations of the active ingredient, or the commercial tablets and prepare a new dosage form, either a solution, or suspension, or something new and novel such as a lozenge or lollipop for dispensing. For the most part, yeah, pharmacists in the retail setting will simply ‘give’ you the medicine; however, be aware that they are trained to prepare custom forms of medication to be better tailored to your individual therapy.
