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Pharmacy / Pharmacology

Hey all , im not sure if this has been posted before . I did try using "Search" but it was not very helpful.

Basically i just wanted to know whats the main difference between pharmacy and pharmacology --- course-wise and the type of jobs people do afterwards?
Is pharmacy the harder of the two courses ?
Is pharmacology more research based , is it a postgraduate degree ?

Thanks for all your help in advance. Really appreciate it ! :smile:

Reply 1

Amoeba

OP

1

Hmm.... looks like there is not much difference between the courses then eh ? lol

Can ANYONE help me pleeaasseee ??!!!

Reply 2

Random.Girl

14

I think there's a few threads about it if you have a look back.

Very loosely pharmacology is the study of what a drug does to the body and what the body does to drug.

Pharmacy allows to go on to qualify and practice as a pharmacist. It involves clinical work (law, ethics, responding to symptoms etc), medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and formulation science as it's main subject areas.

Reply 3

Amoeba

OP

1

Oh thanks alot , i did try Search , but could'nt find anthing much. Will try again though.

Cheers ! :smile:

Reply 4

Apothecary

1

-Emmz-

I think there's a few threads about it if you have a look back.

Very loosely pharmacology is the study of what a drug does to the body and what the body does to drug.

Pharmacy allows to go on to qualify and practice as a pharmacist. It involves clinical work (law, ethics, responding to symptoms etc), medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and formulation science as it's main subject areas.

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion on here about pharmacology and pharmacy. The above quote is basicaslly true. I put a post up a while ago with my thoughts: -

With a degree in Pharmacy you will easily get a job! The companies in retail are going as far away as Poland to recruit because we are so short of pharmacists. You could work in industry, hospital retail or others, and your job will include a lot of talking to other people/giving advice about the actions etc of drugs.

A pharmacologist usually ends up bunny bashing! In other words most work in labs, for various companies, performing experimental pharmacology. In other words animal experimentation. I personally couldn't do that for a job, because I like animals. They usually work in research, testing new drug compounds etc finding appropriate animal models for studies etc. This field can be rewarding, and I know of a guy working on mice to help find cures/treatments for dementia, parkinsons etc. But there's no way I'd stick a needle in a dog, unless it was to help the dog.

I used to work in industry, and as it was years ago the rules weren't as strict for this type of thing. My friend got really upset because she opened a "bin" to put some rubbish in it, and found a dead dog in there. A fitter also was telling me the pharmacology labs have a machine to grind up the dead animals, and he had to fix it because half a dog had got stuck in it.

In hospitals, the only pharmacologists I have met were qualified medics. The first one I met I asked her if she had done a pharmacology degree, and then gone to do medicine. She told me she just did a course and could call herself a pharmacologist. The same applies to microbiologists. In industry they have studied for a microbiology degree etc, but in hospital they are again medics who seem to have done a course. I don't have the details of the course lengths etc, but they won't be as long or as hard as a pharmacology degree, I am sure. This link is from Canada but has quite a good description of what pharmacology is.

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pharm_tox/pharm.html

Just my opinions of course.

Reply 5

Amoeba

OP

1

Oh ok , thanks alot Apothecary, thats made things alot clearer. That site is pretty good . I was just really confused about the difference between the 2. The prospectuses ( is it prspectusi ?! hehe :smile:

) which i read through were not very clear .

Cheers again !

Reply 6

silent ninja

19

The thing about animals is what put me off. Most people seem to forget, working in the pharmaceutical industry will probably involve animal experimentation. My teacher did it, and thats why he left...

Reply 7

papad

Animal experiments would only be in the R and D labs of the company
So if you do pharmacology at uni will you have to do animal experiments!?

Reply 8

Random.Girl

14

Almost certainly I would have said. We do in our pharmacology modules. I'm not 100% at ease with it but they don't ask us to kill the animals and it's all already set up by the time we get to the practical so we don't have to touch anything. I just try not to think about it.

Pharmacy / Pharmacology

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