page_title: Pharmacy
section_title: Community pharmacy
hierarchical_section_title: Pharmacy / Practice areas / Community pharmacy
context_page_description: Pharmacy is the clinical health science that links medical science with chemistry and it is charged with the discovery, production, disposal, safe and effective use, and control of medications and drugs. The practice of pharmacy requires excellent knowledge of drugs, their mechanism of action, side effects, interactions, mobility and toxicity. At the same time, it requires knowledge of treatment and understanding of the pathological process. Some specialties of pharmacists, such as that of clinical pharmacists, require other skills, e.g. knowledge about the acquisition and evaluation of physical and laboratory data.
  The scope of pharmacy practice includes more traditional roles such as compounding and dispensing of medications, and it also includes more modern services related to health care, including clinical services, reviewing medications for safety and efficacy, and providing drug information. Pharmacists, therefore, are the experts on drug therapy and are the primary health professionals who optimize the use of medication for the benefit of the patients.
  An establishment in which pharmacy is practiced is called a pharmacy or a chemist's.
context_section_description: A pharmacy (also known as a chemist in Australia, New Zealand and the British Isles; or drugstore in North America; retail pharmacy in industry terminology; or apothecary, historically) is where most pharmacists practice the profession of pharmacy. It is the community pharmacy in which the dichotomy of the profession exists; health professionals who are also retailers.
  Community pharmacies usually consist of a retail storefront with a dispensary, where medications are stored and dispensed. According to Sharif Kaf al-Ghazal, the opening of the first drugstores are recorded by Muslim pharmacists in Baghdad in 754 AD.
  In most countries, the dispensary is subject to pharmacy legislation; with requirements for storage conditions, compulsory texts, equipment, etc., specified in legislation. It was once the case that pharmacists stayed within the dispensary compounding/dispensing medications, but there has been an increasing trend towards the use of trained pharmacy technicians, with the pharmacist spending more time communicating with patients. Pharmacy technicians are now more dependent upon automation to assist them in their new role dealing with patients' prescriptions and patient safety issues.
  Pharmacies are typically required to have a pharmacist on-duty at all times when they are open. It is also often a requirement for the owner of a pharmacy to be a registered pharmacist, but that is not the case in all jurisdictions, such that many retailers (including supermarkets and mass merchandisers) now include a pharmacy as a department of their store.
  Likewise, many pharmacies are now rather grocery store-like in their design. In addition to medicines and prescriptions, many now sell a diverse arrangement of additional items such as cosmetics, shampoo, office supplies, confections, snack foods, durable medical equipment, greeting cards, and provide photo processing services.
  Community pharmacies offer a unique added value by building direct relationships with their customers. They are able to provide more personalized, dedicated care to local members of their community and even offer enhanced services such as Medication Therapy Management (MTM), Medication Synchronization, and compounding. With the aid of pharmacy management systems and different integrated technologies, these smaller pharmacies are able to keep up with their large-scale competition. 
  In community pharmacy, prescriptions, medical devices and other over the counter products are dispensed by community pharmacists. Community pharmacists may be confronted with numerous ethical problems in their daily work. Ethical issues may exist while dispensing medications based on prescription and over the counter products. Community pharmacists’ understanding of ethics, confidentiality, patient autonomy, trustworthiness and reliability may be the dynamics that affect community pharmacists’ values which may influence their decision making during ethical dilemmas. Most of the pharmacists face the ethical dilemma situations may be at least once a week in their pharmacies. Community pharmacists may compromise on their values and ethical issues may not only because of patient's or physician's request but may also because of their employers' intrusion. Individual factors such as age, gender, work experience, and educational level and organizational factors such as the number of pharmacists in a pharmacy and location of pharmacy may influence the ethical dilemma of community pharmacists.
caption: Modern pharmacy in Norway
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