Pharmacist Duties: Roles, Jobs & Vaccine Development

[Leon W Zhang]

Who are Pharmacists? What kind of jobs are they responsible for? Are they responsible for developing vaccines for diseases such as Hepatitis B, C and HIV with the assistance of doctors?

 

[brewnog]

In short:
A pharmacist prepares and dispenses drugs.
A pharmacologist develops them.

 

[GCT]

pharmacologist, as brewnog said, deal more with the research aspect of things. To be able to engage in developing a vacinne, you'll need sufficient training in chemistry and medicine, much more than that required of a all around pharmacologist and certainly more than pharmacist. You may be able to work with them, but not engage in the process I imagine, but certainly not menial tasks. That is not of the research process but "housekeeping" tasks.

 

[Valhalla]

My mother has a PharmD (Doctor of Pharmacy) and she works in a hospital's pharmacy. She not only dispenses the drugs but regularly has to correct the dosages doctors are prescribing to their patients. She also maintains and ensures that there are no drug interactions that can be dangerous to the patients. She gives advice to the doctors on what the best medicine may be for a specific situation. Be warned though, medical doctors usually have a lot of pride (in general, not all of them) and do not like being told that what they just prescribed a patient is hurting them more than helping them.