Pharmacy is one of the most important and highly regarded professions in the medical field. The graduates of a pharmacy institute are called pharmacists. To become pharmacists, they have to meet the pharmacy degree requirements set by the pharmacy council and also the institutes they are studying from.

When you think of pharmacists, you imagine a person wearing overalls, gloves, and goggles in a corner pharmacy, dispensing and filling your prescriptions. While that might be true, that’s not all of it. Pharmacy is a wide field and pharmacists can choose any career after a pharmacy degree from even a wider list of opportunities.

Here are some of the many, most important career options for pharmacists after completing a pharmacy degree.

Community pharmacists

Yeah, you guessed it. After completing their degrees from an accredited university or college, one of the most visible and obvious careers for pharmacists is to become community pharmacists. As a pharmacist, you have to have a grip over the medicine as well as all the skills needed as a healthcare professional while working in a community pharmacy. 

Having complete knowledge of each and every medicine available is vital for you to serve the community. You should have a command over the benefits, uses, dosage, and storage requirements for every drug in your possession.

In case of an overdose, you will have to neutralize the effects of the drug with an antidote. You should be completely prepared to deal with every emergency at any time. Using your communication skills, you can also educate the community members about the smart and safe usage of drugs.

Hospital pharmacists

Part of the job as a hospital pharmacist is to fill prescriptions but that’s not all of it too. Although that might be the same as a community pharmacist, hospital pharmacists deal with both outpatients and inpatients of the hospital they are working in. Purchasing, holding, and distributing medicines throughout the different departments of a hospital are the key duties of a pharmacist.

In addition to that, they have to work with other healthcare professionals such as doctors and nursing staff for the benefit of patients. They are accountable for the quality and availability of all the required medicine in a hospital.

Going on inpatient visits to verify that all the medicines are being handled by the patients and the staff in the right way and making reports of their visits and presenting them to their superiors are the other responsibilities they have to be accountable for.

Pharmaceutical industry

In the pharmaceutical industry, pharmacists can apply for many jobs with a pharmacy degree. They can work as production pharmacists to supervise all the manufacturing of medicine, conduct clinical trials in research and development, and can also work in sales and marketing.

In a pharmaceutical industry setting, pharmacists have to make sure that all the raw materials used for making medicine are of top-shelf quality. They can control the quality of the drugs being dispatched for the patients in communities, hospitals, or any other setting.

Clinical specialists

Out of all the jobs that pharmacists can acquire after completing a Pharm-D program, being a clinical specialist is the most flexible one. They can specialize in many fields such as pediatrics, geriatrics, ambulatory care, cardiology, infectious diseases, and many others.

Once they qualify as clinical specialists in any of the fields, they can provide extended care services to patients dealing with those conditions. As clinical specialists, they are in the perfect condition to provide their services to the people who are in dire need of them. 

Teaching 

During their studies, pharmacy graduates study many subjects such as pharmacology, pharmacy practice, pharmaceutics, economics, and others. This makes them the perfect candidates to pursue any field for further studies and teach them in private or government institutes. They would need to master their teaching as well as communication skills to better perform this duty and produce new pharmacists for the future.

In addition to the above, a pharmacist can select from many other career options such as nuclear pharmacists, primary and secondary care pharmacists, military pharmacists, mental health pharmacists, drug officers, and others. All of these jobs can only be performed by pharmacists in the best possible way and they can earn good annual wages by serving the community.