Tuesday, June 22, 2010

What Is Pharmacy School

Often I have discussed how few people know what it is a pharmacist truly does. An extension of that is even few people know what pharmacy school is as well.

I have been inquiring about the viability of continuing several things I do for fun during school and often I find myself having to explain precisely what pharmacy school entails. Most people seem to think it's a two year associates-type degree that you can finish at night. All are equally shocked when I start describing what it is I will be doing over the next four years.

Which leads me to wonder if those deciding on pharmacy as a profession choice are fully informed. Often I find myself wanting to compare pharmacy school to medical school, namely in terms of intensity, but I do not want to draw that parallel and have it spread.

So my question to you is, how would you describe pharmacy school to lay people. Obviously it has to be in concise phrases void of complex explanations. Most people don't know what Med Chem or Pharmcotherapy is.

Perhaps I could condense it even more into an informative post for those looking towards pharmacy in the future.

That being said... any ideas?

4 comments:

Meghan said...

Tell them is doctorate program that results in a professional license (such as an MD, JD, DDS, etc.)(this denotes the length of time and depth of the material to anyone whose knows anything about university/education structure), that is heavily based in chemistry. Obviously you could go a bit more in depth if you like. You could also add that the 2 year program they are thinking about is for pharmacy technicians.

PharmStudent Widow said...

Explain that it's like a doctor degree but with less ego and fewer messes to clean up. People also take the job more seriously when you give them the earning figures.

Sunny said...

'It is a four year degree, where we learn about all the meds your doctor will prescribe. We also learn about what makes these drugs work, and what kind of reactions they will have when taken together, among other things; with (number of drugs you need to learn about) that's a lot to keep track of'.

Anonymous said...

All that just to count the number of pills in a prescription.