The pharmacy of today is vastly different from the neighborhood pharmacy of fifty years ago. No longer do pharmacists fill out a prescription as written without question. Pharmacists in some communities work with patients, the patient's doctors, and insurance companies to manage the patient's disease states. Increasingly, they are the point of contact for a patient who has various prescriptions from various doctors, for various illnesses. A doctor may not know all the medications his patient is using, but the pharmacist will.Written as a pharmacy primer, Pharmacy: What It is and How It Works provides an introduction to this field. Broad in scope and extensively referenced, it covers the history of pharmacy and details the different facets of the field. It presents chapters on pharmacy and pharmacists, drug development, the drug use process, drug pricing, pharmaceutical care, information technology, pharmacy automation, and career planning.The pharmaceutical profession is at a crossroads. The changing needs of doctors and patients combined with the changing needs of insurance companies has, in turn, changed what is expected of the pharmacist. The question remains: what is pharmacy's future? Will one organization speak for all facets of the profession? Will pharmacy become a true clinical profession? Pharmacy: What It is and How It Works will prepare you for the changes that are inevitable in this field.