After being diagnosed and treated by your primary healthcare provider, the pharmacists are your go-to guys for filling your prescription.
When you show up with a prescription, your pharmacist will carefully go through it, meticulously interpreting the contents. In addition to verifying the recommended medication, dosage and frequency, they will also confirm your provider’s credentials including name, practice number and signature.
They will also assess your health history to help determine if the prescription is right for you. All this is aimed at ensuring that whatever they are filling is the right dosage, medication type and frequency.
Being aware of how this process works is critical to maximizing the effectiveness of your medication in a bid to bolster your healthcare. So, YES! A pharmacist sees your prescription. In the discussion below we converge our attention to what purpose this serves.
Prescription can be read by the pharmacist
Treatment of medical conditions
The primary role of prescriptions is to provide treatment for various medical conditions including infections, common pains, chronic illnesses, and mental health disorders amongst many others, through medication. This is because, without treatment methods such as medication, the provision of healthcare will be incomplete.
Preventive care
After evaluating your health history, genetic predisposition and overall tolerance, your healthcare provider may decide to put you under preventive care to reduce the chances of you contracting certain conditions that you may be exposed to. Preventive medication could come in the form of vaccines, birth control pills and other drugs to prevent migraines and other illnesses.
Managing symptoms
Some illnesses, when detected early and necessary medication taken, can produce mild symptoms, compared to when they are detected later. For instance, certain medications can be taken to reduce or alleviate symptoms associated with illnesses or medical treatments such as nausea, inflammation or allergic reactions.
Providing necessary supplies
Besides medication, prescriptions can also contain other medical supplies that are used to administer or complement medications. Such supplies include things such as needles, syringes, inhalers, and kits for testing blood sugar and pregnancies.
Diagnostic purposes
Something else pharmacists come across when filling prescriptions is contrast agents used in imaging tests such as MRI and X-ray. Also, prescriptions can come with diagnostic tests that require preparation such as the ones stated above.
Information on a prescription
Prescriptions carry different types of information such as patient details. This includes the patient name, age, illness, symptoms and some bits of their past health details. All these play a crucial role in helping the pharmacist determine if the prescription, according to these details, is right for the patient. In the prescription, you will also find the physician’s details such as their name, name of their establishment in cases of private practice, practice number and signature. Another set of information that comes with prescriptions is the medication, dosage and directions for use.
Why pharmacists need to know the purpose of medications
Safety reasons
Among the many reasons for pharmacists to know the purpose of medications is safety. Interactions with other drugs currently being taken by the patient could cause them adverse effects such as allergies and other reactions. Since the pharmacist, just like the physician, has a responsibility to safeguard the wellbeing of patients, they must clearly understand the purpose of the medication.
Effective patient counseling
The role of pharmacists is not limited to just filling your prescriptions; they go ahead to offer supportive counseling to help you make the most out of your medication. For instance, they will tell you when to take the medication, whether or not to take certain foods and when to take it. Such information is geared towards helping patients achieve maximum effectiveness from the prescribed treatment. Along with dietary recommendations, pharmacists will also suggest lifestyle adjustments to help manage some conditions like diabetes and hypertension
Optimizing therapeutic outcomes
It is imperative to know that pharmacists can alter prescriptions tailored to the health needs of their patients. For instance, if the original form of certain medications is not available or is too expensive, the pharmacist can substitute it with a cheaper generic form of the same medication. They can also substitute the recommended form for instance tablet, with suspension. All this is geared towards making the medication comfortable for the patient to improve their adherence.
Conclusion
Your input also goes a long way in making work easier for the pharmacist to better tailor your medication to address your health needs. If there is something that you do not understand, it is always advisable to ask the right questions so that you also understand your symptoms better.
