Being a student, we always want to grow with success in academic life. However, in practical life, academic & career life are quite different. The only thing that connects your academic success with career success is your interest. Transformation of passion into a profession constitutes an amazing combination that will make you shine like a star. Offcourse hardworking & continue learning are key factors. But one more thing that will help you is to know about the scope & career opportunities of your field. It will give you an idea about it.
- Department of interest in the respective field.
- Chance of promotion & growth.
- Types of employment associated with your respected field.
- Ways to express your abilities.
- Its scope throughout the world.
It is, therefore, an essential step to know the worth of your field by doing practical research on its scope & future. It will stabilize your decision as well as give you a definite point of focus towards that field. Here our main focus is to discuss:
- Scope of pharmacy.
- Career opportunities.
- Its demand throughout the world.
- Types of employment.
Let’s start:
Pharmacy developing scope is a valid fact that is accepted throughout the world. A chemist or microbiologist cannot handle the technical aspects, critical issues, as well as minor issues. Slowly & gradually, pharmacists are replacing chemists in the pharmaceutical industry with a valid reason that chemists cannot understand the nature of chemicals, especially when it is marked as & medicinal drug” in a way as a pharmacist can. There is a saying that:
“Every medicine/drug is a chemical or but not every chemical/drug can be marked as medicine.”
This clearly highlights the significance of pharmacist in comparison with chemist & microbiologist.
Moreover, if we discuss the need for pharmacists at the hospital, then again, here is the brief list of duties & functions that cannot be performed by physicians & pharmacists is needed to assist him.
Scope of pharmacy:
It was now coming towards our main area of focus that is to discuss the scope of pharmacy. The nucleus of the pharmacy field os “medicine” or “dosage form” like tablets, capsules, injectables, suspension, etc. New products are being manufactured, launched & marketed with new potency, therapeutic index, advance effects & better results after along journey of research, testing & trials. This system needs professionally competent pharmacists to face this challenge. This is the main reason that increases the scope of pharmacy all over the world. The scope of pharmacy is listed below that will further discuss in detail on the same page.
- Community pharmacy.
- Hospital pharmacy.
- Industrial pharmacy.
- Research & development.
- Pharmaceutical journalism.
- Academics.
Each of the places mentioned above of scope in the field of pharmacy is filled with a lot of numerous employment opportunities & career progression with growth & development.
1. Community pharmacy:
It is the discipline of the pharmacy where legally qualified & professionally qualified pharmacists practice pharmacy in the community within people for pharmaceutical care. First world war countries refer to pharmacists, more than a physician.
The medical store is now an outdated term that is replaced by community pharmacy. Now here is another term entrepreneurship that means profession plus business. Entrepreneurship includes all like a retail pharmacy—sales, etc. Here the job is linked with business & an excellent opportunity who have a business mind & always want to do their own business, so by running the pharmacy stores; they can unite profession & passion for the medical field together.
Choice of employments :
As we discussed earlier that every place of the scope of pharmacy offers numerous jobs & employment opportunities related to it. So community pharmacy provide following type of employment to the pharmacists:
- Retail pharmacy.
- Wholesale pharmacy.
- Stockist & distribution.
- Sale pharmacy.
Here a question may arise that what is the role of pharmacy in retail & sale?
The pharmacist is needed at every place where medicine is being handled because only he is aware of the protocol & guidelines, Storage conditions, Stability issues, shelf life & a lot of such stuff.
2. Hospital pharmacy:
Hospital pharmacy is the main domain in the field of pharmacy. It is a standard protocol that the school of pharmacy must be associated with hospitals so that students during their pharm D degree can go to clinical rounds or completed internships of specific duration in a hospital setup. In the hospital, the health care services are extensive & exclusive that directly increases the responsibilities of a pharmacist.
Hospital pharmacy is the practice of pharmaceutical care by legally qualified & professionally competent pharmacist providing pharmaceutical care in hospital setups where the pharmacist is responsible for giving varieties of services like:
- Monitor prescription handling.
- Administration of IV infusions of antibiotics.
- Patient profile.
- Patient counseling.
- Adjustment in dose.
- The decision of diet plan for patients according to medications.
- Selection of correct regimen for chemotherapy.
Choice of employments:
Under the category of hospital pharmacy, there is various type of jobs & designations for pharmacists. As Hospital is a large health care system, therefore it offers pharmacists a great diversity of job & employment such as:
- Procurement is a selection of drug, purchasing & its control dispensation.
- Documentation & records.
- Receiving medicinal drugs.
- Inventory control & drug storage.
- Bulk compounding, packaging & labeling.
- Distribution of medication in unit dosage form
- Oncology departments.
According to the job description & experience of pharmacists in hospital pharmacy set up, he gets its designation like:
- Internee pharmacists.
- Junior pharmacists.
- Pharmacy manager.
- Senior pharmacist.
3. Industrial pharmacy:
The pharmaceutical industry is a place where medicine is being manufactured, packaged, stored, tested & then marketed for consumer use. A low scale pharmaceutical industry can employ more than 500 people include pharmacists, chemists, microbiologists, biochemists, finance managers, marketing personals, etc. The industry is also considered as “profit generator” that is more money is earned then invested. Educational & health care centers are never supposed to be a place of profit generators.
The pharma industry can be well defined as “an industry in which raw material for any dosage form 9 Tablet, capsules, injectables, etc.) is processed & product is manufactured & marketed by fulfilling all the quality & protocols for consumer use to generate profit.” The pharmaceutical industry has different departments like:
- Quality control.
- Quality assurance.
- Warehouse.
- Production.
- R & D.
- Engineering depart.
- Regulatory affairs.
A pharmacist can fit himself in any department of pharmaceutical industry according to his mode of interest because they are trained in such a way that they understand the basics of each & every department even engineering & marketing is the familiar field for them.
Source of employments:
In third world countries, it is the first discipline of employment for pharmacists by hires education. Excellent employment opportunities are being provided by pharma industries in the department mentioned above. Pharmaceutical companies hire skilled personnel more then any other domain of pharmacy & workload, the vacancy & need for pharmacists is more in the pharma industry. The designation of pharmacist progress with time like:
- Officer.
- Executive.
- Associate manager.
4. Research & development:
This scope of pharmacy belongs to the institute where pharmacists are being hired for research-based studies & experiments that may be of chemical testing or clinical trials. Not only in pharmacy, but research is also encouraged in each & every field throughout the world. The literature of each drug needs to be updated after a specific time. For this purpose, research articles are published by research institutes to provide updated knowledge of medicine after a particular interval of time. Research in pharmacy usually aims for the objectives that are mentioned below.
- To discover natural products that can be used as anticancer, antibacterial & antimalarial.
- To developed method for Chemical & physical analysis of the crude drug.
- To develop new drug molecules with the least susceptibility of resistance.
- To improve drug design & quality.
- To study the interaction of nanoparticles with immune cells.
- To enhance the control release mechanism of the drug by introducing polymeric technologies
Source of employments:
Research & development field is particular & needs highly intellectual & extraordinary pharmacists with previous job experience so that they can further continue research in that particular field. Pharmacists are appointed by their academic results as well as thinking capability. Pharmacists can start his career as an analyst & further promote as:
- Research officer.
- Research scholar.
- Research fellow.
- Scholar.
- Head of the department.
5. Pharmaceutical Academics:
Pharmaceutical academics include schools & colleges of pharmacy. Institutes that produce pharmacists polish their abilities & trained them to serve their profession. Of course, teachers & professors ae essential needs of pharmacy schools & colleges. They share their experience with students & give them a quality education & acknowledge students with theoretical & technical aspects of the field of pharmacy. In both 1st and 3rd world war countries, pharmaceutical academia is considered as noble & respected profession with bright chances of career development.
Source of employment:
It is a field which considered a career field. The pharmacist may require a higher grade & can proceed to a higher level. The minimum required to get employed with pharmaceutical academia is post-graduation or M.S in pharmacy or M.pharm Or M.phil. The pharmacist can start his career from the beginning (lecturer) & may get future progress according to mentioned below sequence:
- Lecturer.
- Assistant professor.
- Associate professor.
- Meritorious professor.
- Chancellor.
- Vice-chancellor.
Conclusion:
Pharmacy is a field with wide career opportunities & scope. Pharmacists are highly needed throughout the world & no one can deny their importance & need. So no need to worry about its range as it provides 100 varieties of jobs. Only the pharma industry offers pharmacists more than 20 different types of jobs that provide you with the choice to select following the department of your interest. This scope of pharmacy is expected to increase more in the upcoming years.