Pharmacist

In another time or place, when medicine was mystical, a Pharmacist might have been called a shaman, medicine man or witch Doctor. He or she might have even believed in “humors,” bloodletting and incantations. Today, however, the world understands that medicine isn’t spiritual; it’s scientific. As such, you’re not a sorcerer, as your predecessors were. You’re a Pharmacist.

Make no mistake: You’re a 21st century healer. Pharmacists don’t have magic powers that help them treat diseases, however. Instead, they have drugs, and they devote their lives to understanding them so they can improve — and often save — patients’ lives.

To that end, your job is much more than filling and labeling prescriptions, although that certainly can be part of it. In addition to selling them, it’s studying medications and learning to speak their language. Becoming fluent requires understanding the chemical and physical composition of drugs, as well as how they’re made, how they’re tested and how they work within the body, by themselves and in combination with other substances.

In addition to portioning and packaging prescriptions, you use your knowledge to educate patients — and for that matter, Physicians — about the proper use of medication, and to counsel them about potential side effects. For that reason, you’re like a health care Librarian; you’re there to supply information as well as medicine.

Although you commonly work in retail and hospital pharmacies, you may also work for pharmaceutical companies, developing, testing and marketing drugs. In the laboratory and pharmacy alike, however, patients are always your No. 1 priority.