Faculty of Pharmacy

Pharmacy will provide you with the skills and knowledge required to provide assistance to customers and to work as part of a pharmacy team. On completion you should have an understanding of the requirements and boundaries of the pharmacy assistant job role and identify when to refer to a senior staff member or pharmacist. This course has been structured to provide you with this knowledge, as well as a range of retail operational tasks and customer service skills. Typical functions within the community pharmacy industry for those who complete this training include: Responding to questions and advising customers on general products sold in a pharmacy, Referring customers to more senior pharmacy assistants or a pharmacist when necessary, Operating within the legislative framework, regulation and protocols that apply to community pharmacy. Pharmaceutical care is a methodology of working with patients, their caregivers and their medication(s) including herbals, over the counter agents and the providers there of. It is a concept that deals with the way patients, their families, healthcare providers, should receive and use medication, information about medication and instructions for use. Pharmaceutical care encompasses information, assimilation of data and interpretation of the data using best possible medication histories to get the right drug to the right patient at the right time for the right condition with a minimum of adverse effects. One point to take into consideration when working with patients is that they experience not only a DISEASE but a DIS-EASE. Thus we have a physical and physiological component to every patient and diagnosis. This also impact as to why no 2 patients' course of disease remains the same. Helper and Strand, in the 1980’s, developed a new definition in which the patient’s position in the triad of patient, physician and pharmacist receives even more emphasis. Pharmaceutical Care is that component of pharmacy practice which entails the direct interaction of the pharmacist with the patient for the purpose of caring for that patient's drug-related needs In 1997, Strand redefined pharmaceutical care as: "A practice for which the practitioner takes responsibility for a patients drug therapy needs and is held accountable for this commitment.