Different types of pharmacies

Pharmacies can be classified into several categories such as community, hospital, clinical, compounding, consultant, Internet, and nuclear. In most cases, community pharmacies comprise a retail storefront with a dispensary where medications are stored and dispensed. The dispensary has to go by pharmacy legislation fulfilling the requirements for storage conditions, compulsory texts, equipment, etc. There must be a pharmacist on duty when a pharmacy is open. Today, many retailers like supermarkets include a pharmacy as a department of their store and many sell other household items like shampoo, cosmetics etc.

Hospital pharmacies are usually located within the premises of the hospital. They stock a larger range of medications, including more specialized medications than community pharmacies. Hospital pharmacists are usually called clinical pharmacists who often specialize in various disciplines of pharmacy like hematology or oncology, infectious disease, HIV/AIDS, emergency medicine etc. Clinical pharmacists often collaborate with doctors and other healthcare professionals.

A compounding pharmacist’s job is to prepare drugs in new forms. If a patient finds a tablet difficult to swallow, he/she might make a medicated lollipop containing the particular drug for the patient to suck. Although compounding pharmacies focus on compounding, many of them dispense the same non-compounded drugs that patients can obtain from community pharmacies. The principal job of a consultant pharmacist is medication regimen review rather than actual dispensing of drugs. They mostly work in nursing homes, but are now increasingly found in other institutions and non-institutional settings. They can be of great help for elderly people taking numerous medications living outside institutional settings.

In recent times, many Internet pharmacies have sprung up that serve consumers online. Some customers find it a more convenient and private method rather than traveling to a community pharmacist full of other people. However, some Internet pharmacists sell drugs without prescription which is a dangerous practice. Nuclear pharmacy mainly prepares radioactive materials for diagnostic tests and for treating certain diseases. They receive special training for this job and rarely interact directly with patients.