A Career as a Pharmacist

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The importance of the becoming a pharmacist should not be about what the career can give a person in monetary value or the amount of accolades one receives. Instead, the career should be about saving and improving human lives and serving the public. Pharmacists keep people healthy, make them feel better, and try to help the public live longer and happier lives as long as possible. From small infant children to the elderly, everyone needs pharmaceutical care. Sometimes it can be a matter of life and death if medication is not available to the public. Pharmacy as a career would be a wise decision if a person could withstand the amount of education the profession entails.

According to Dr. Robert Zebroski, a professor at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, King James I established Western society’s first independent pharmacist guild in England during the early 17th century. Pharmacies were known as “apothecaries” back then and they would prepare and dispense medication or remedies and offer medical advice to their patrons (Zebroski). Soon English colonists knew these apothecaries as pharmacist when they traveled to the New World approximately 150 years ago. Zebroski also noted, that Edward Parrish began the American Pharmaceutical Association and “proposed that members of the national professional organization consider all the varied pharmaceutical practitioners ‘pharmacists’ (Zebroski).” The federal government changed the role of pharmacy in 1951 with the passage of the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Basically, what this entailed was that pharmacists needed a physician’s prescription to dispense medication versus simply dispensing all drugs. Pharmacists were restricted to reco...

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