Pharmacology, the study of the interactions between prescription drugs and the body, comprises the nuts and bolts of pharmacy training. Pharmacology deals with appropriate drug dosing, the effects of pharmaceuticals on various biological systems in the body, such as the central nervous, vascular and endocrine systems. Pharmacology promotes the safety of prescriptions, the obtaining of maximum therapeutic results from imbibing a drug and the minimizing of harmful side effects.
Health care and insurance classes provide pharmacy students with a sense of their role in the bigger picture of the U.S. health industry. Pharmacists are expected to be sufficiently competent to provide patients with health-related information, but to have the necessary insight to know when to refer patients to a doctor. Furthermore, a health care and insurance class will cover pharmacist-patient relationships as they relate to insurance, U.S. health care policies and government regulations.
Pharmacist ethics courses teach students about pharmacy business ethics, as well as the code of conduct spelling out pharmacists' moral, lega, and social obligations. Pharmacist ethics courses discuss laws as they relate to pharmacists, as well as governing agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and state pharmacy boards. Students discuss the ethical treatment of patients and engage in case studies regarding compliance with pharmacy ethics.
Biological statistics, the study of statistics in relation to medicine, provides pharmacy students with the necessary information to make calculations accurately. Because the difference between an effective and a lethal dose of medication can be small, biological statistics is an indispensable course. Furthermore, biological statistics courses include discussions of regressions, variance analysis and hypothesis testing.