If you think that all pharmacies are the same, you might want to give it a second thought. Just so you know, there are actually different types of pharmacies that are unique in their own way.
- Ambulatory Pharmacy
Ambulatory pharmacies offer healthcare services to patients based in rural areas, especially to geriatric populations. An ambulatory pharmacy is a type of mobile service that meets patients wherever they are that helps cut back the need to visit hospitals.
- Clinical Pharmacy
Clinical pharmacies can be found in different settings such as nursing homes, hospitals, and other medical centers. The goal of these pharmacies is guarantee optimal medication use to achieve the best results.
- Community Pharmacy
Community pharmacies or also called retail pharmacies are the most popular types of pharmacy. This is traditionally known as chemist or pharmacist shops. These pharmacies offer the community access to their required medications and provide advice to encourage effective and safe use of their medicines.
- Compounding Pharmacy
Compounding pharmacies involve the preparation and production of new forms of medicines. This might include reformulation of powder tablets into a solution to make the drug easier to administer to some patients.
- Consulting Pharmacy
It was only in 1990 when consulting pharmacies were developed, making this branch of pharmacy relatively new compared to others in the list. The focus of consulting pharmacies is the theoretical review of medications instead of dispensing medicines.
- Home Care Pharmacy
Home care pharmacies mainly involve delivery and preparation of injectables to patients in home environment who are diagnosed with critical illnesses. These are also called infusion pharmacies because they only dispense injectable medications and not other forms of medications like topical or oral.
- Hospital Pharmacy
Medications in hospitals, medical clinics, and nursing homes are managed in hospital pharmacies. Hospital pharmacists usually work hand in hand with other healthcare providers to ensure that every patient’s medication regimen is optimized to generate the best results.
- Industrial Pharmacy
Industrial pharmacies involve the pharmaceutical industry, including the research, manufacturing, quality control, packaging, sales, and marketing of different pharmaceutical goods.
- Managed Care Pharmacy
Managed care pharmacies involve the management and planning of medication in different organizations for health maintenance such as extended healthcare centers, nursing homes, and hospitals.
- Regulatory Pharmacy
Regulatory pharmacies or also called government pharmacies are the ones that create rules and regulations for safe use of medicines for promoting positive health outcomes.
- Research pharmacy
Research pharmacies develop new drugs and profile their effectiveness, interactions, actions, and side effects.
Other Specializations in Pharmacy
There are also pharmacists that specialize in specific areas of drug therapy with their master[s degree and other forms of continued learning. It helps them gain recognition and proficiency to practice in some specialized fields. It may include different areas including the following:
- Geriatric pharmacy
- Hospice pharmacy
- Nuclear pharmacy
- Nutritional support pharmacy
- Oncology pharmacy
- Pediatric pharmacy
- Personal pharmacy
- Pharmacy benefit manager
- Poison control pharmacy
- Psychopharmacotherapy