Ask the Pharmacist What are the duties and responsibilities of a hospital pharmacist in multi-specialty hospitals?
The scope of pharmacy practice has changed drastically over the past two-to-three decades. A pharmacist is no longer just the person who counts pills. These changes have taken place at the retail level, and in institutions such as hospitals.

Hospital pharmacists have multiple duties and responsibilities. This is especially true at large teaching institutions. Let me give you a few examples of what pharmacists do here at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

You are probably familiar with the job of making sure medications ordered by prescribers are available for patients. Even this seemingly simple task is actually quite complex.

When an order is written, it is reviewed by a pharmacist. The pharmacist takes into account the patient’s height, weight, allergies, diagnosis and other medications when reviewing an order. This is somewhat similar to what local pharmacists do in drugstores, although the packing of the medications is probably different.

In a hospital, many patients are receiving fluids and drugs. Pharmacists supervise the preparation of these products, paying attention to the concentration of the medication in the fluids and making sure that medications that should not be mixed in the same bag or line are separated appropriately. These pharmacists are also responsible for the preparation of specialty fluids, like intravenous nutrition and cancer chemotherapy.

While that might sound like a lot, it is just a snapshot of some of the things that take place in the pharmacy itself. At many institutions like ours, pharmacists work in other areas of the hospital.

Here, we have pharmacists in several intensive care areas, including the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where the sickest newborn babies receive care. There are pharmacists that go on rounds with some patient-care teams, such as the nutrition, pain management and cancer teams. These pharmacists help choose, dose and monitor the drugs to be used on patients covered by those teams.

We also are involved in education. Pharmacists not only help educate the patients and families, but also give lectures to physicians, nurses and other pharmacists about medicines and their appropriate use. Some of our pharmacists give lectures to the local schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy.

Another major emphasis at our institution is research. We have pharmacists involved in designing human studies and making sure they are carried out in accordance with the applicable laws, rules and regulations.

As you can see, there are a lot of different duties and responsibilities for hospital pharmacists in multi-specialty institutions. I mentioned quite a few of them, but there are many more that I did not touch on here because that would take a book, not just several paragraphs.

I hope I helped with your question, and I also hope this made you interested in learning more about the profession.

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DISCLAIMER: Ask a University Physician is a University of Mississippi Medical Center informational program designed to provide general information on a variety of health topics. It is not a physician referral service, nor is it designed as a "second opinion" source for the initial diagnoses of individual health care providers. It is certainly not intended to take the place of your personal physician - should you or one of your family members have a medical problem, always consult your own physician for diagnosis and treatment.