Pharmacy Practice Settings

The profession of pharmacy is practiced in many environments, which are commonly divided into ambulatory care and institutional settings.

1. Ambulatory Care, or outpatient, settings serve patients living in their own homes or similar situations and include community clinics, home care and mail order.
2. Institutional or inpatient settings are those in which patients reside in a facility where they receive long or short-term care from health professionals.  

Community Pharmacy
The community pharmacy is the corner drug store or the local retail or grocery store pharmacy.

Mail-Order Pharmacy
Pharmacist and technicians also work in mail-order facilities, through which patients have their prescriptions filled and refilled through the mail. Mail-order pharmacies are really more like warehouses with pharmacists and technicians.

Hospital Pharmacy
Pharmacists are directly involved with patient care and have daily interactions with physicians, nurses, other care givers.

Pharmacists develop plans of pharmaceutical care, medication management and with other caregivers, monitor the patients drug therapy.

In addition to direct patient care, pharmacist evaluate trends in medication and physician prescribing, develop guidelines for medication use, educate patients and healthcare professionals, and implement and maintain drug distribution.

In the hospital setting Pharmacy technicians can:

1. Enter physician med orders into the computer
2. Prepare IV drug admixtures
3. Repackage and label unit dose medications
4. Restock automated dispensing units
5. Deliver medications
6. General paper work  

Home Health Care
Home health care is defined as “physician ordered services provided to patients at their residences, be it in their own homes or any other setting in which the patient lives. Such services include:

1. Personal care
2. Hospice & Respite Care
3. Shopping assistance
4. Drug and infusion therapy
5. Speech, physical and occupational therapy
6. Technician duties in a home care setting may include
7. Preparing sterile injectable products
8. Maintaining computerized patient profiles
9. Delivering medications and supplies to a patient’s home.

Long-Term Care
Long-term care facilities are those institutions where patients stay for extended periods. They include:

1. Nursing Homes
2. Psychiatric or behavioral health institutions
3. Intermediate care facilities for mentally disabled patients
4. Skilled nursing facilities

Most of these facilities do not have pharmacies on site but contract with local community pharmacies for needed services; pharmacists and technicians thus do not have direct patient interaction.

Specialty Pharmacy Services
Just as pharmacists may choose to specialize in an area of pharmacy (e.g, ambulatory care, cardiology, infectious diseases, nutrition, oncology, organ transplant, or pediatrics), so may technicians. Technicians may specialize in areas  such as:

1. Inventory purchasing and management
2. Sterile product preparations
3. Surgical Pharmacy
4. Nuclear Pharmacy
5. Veterinary Pharmacy
6. Non-sterile (extemporaneous) compounding