Education Needed for a Pharmacist

The education needed for a pharmacist is intense, but when you’re handling pills others are going to take, that’s necessary.

Starting with the Basics

When you’re in high school, you need to put down the drug paraphernalia long enough to crack open your books. In order to become a successful pharmacy student and get into a good program, you will need to take:

• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physical science
• Calculus and other advanced math courses

The more Advanced Placement courses you can take in high school, and then pass the AP test, the more likely you are to get into a pharmacy school. In addition, you might be able to test out of some of your basic science classes, saving you time and money along the way.

Yes, your grades do matter when you’re in high school. You’re trying to prove to your future teachers that you’re someone who won’t doze off in class, too often.

Going to Pharmacy Schools

The best way to approach a pharmacy education is to look into schools which are dedicated to teaching you to become a pharmacist. Some universities will have colleges devoted only to pharmacy – that’s what you want. If you’re interested in heading back to school to get some pharmacy training, but you’re not completely sold on the idea of being a pharmacist, you might want to look into pharmacy tech programs through a local technical college or community college. Here, you can have the training you need to work in a hospital or pharmacy, but you won’t have to learn absolutely everything that a real pharmacist would. Read: it won’t take as long.

When You Want to be the Head Honcho

If you do want to be the big pharmacist in a medical setting, you will want to make sure you are taking the full program of pharmacy studies. These programs last around seven years and will include everything from the basics of biology and chemistry and then they will take you through the various classes of drugs, their effects, their interactions, etc. This is not going to be an easy process, to say the least. But you will have a better chance of being able to get into management positions after a while – and then you can boss around other pharmacy techs.