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how do different pharmacies differ from one another?

ex. hospital pharm & cvs type pharm

pharmacy pharmacist pharmaceuticals
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Mariah’s Answer

If you are wondering how they are different in the sense of how it would feel to work in one vs the other there are a lot of factors to consider. There is a wide and variable difference in salary, work schedule, work flow, interprofessional interactions, work tasks/expectations, work environment etc. In a community setting you are working primarily with pharmacy technicians or 1-2 other pharmacists, primarily calling and coordinating with physicians and insurance plans and interacting with community members by dispensing meds, counseling on meds and doing vaccinations. In a hospital, as a staff pharmacist, you are primarily working among other pharmacists (typically far more than 2 other pharmacists), verifying, compounding and dispensing meds that get sent around the hospital with little to no interaction with patients and most interactions being with nurses, physician's or other pharmacists. If you go into a residency program and become a specialized clinical pharmacist within a hospital you will have a very different experience than the one I just described with much more patient interaction, interdisciplinary interaction and far less dispensing/prescription verification. In addition to what I described logistically the buildings and pharmacies themselves have a huge variability in their overall vibe as you can imagine working in a hospital feels a lot different than being in the back of a CVS.
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Seth’s Answer

I switched from working at CVS (hi, store 1849!) to hospital pharmacy so that I had better control over my schedule. During the time I was at CVS we went from 8 hour to 10 hour to 14 hour shifts, and I don't feel safe working much longer than 8 hours except in emergencies. My shifts in hospital pharmacy were usually 8 hour, unless I was working an overnight shift, the length of which can vary from hospital to hospital. The number of pharmacists varies by the type of hospital. A small critical access hospital may have only a part-time pharmacist to service a handful of beds. A major academic hospital (the type I usually worked at) can have a variety of pharmacists working simultaneously depending on what patient areas are occupied: ED, Adult or Pediatric Psych, ICU, NICU, Med/Surg, L&D, Transplant...the list goes on and on. The skill set you develop in hospital pharmacy is much wider than you'll commonly use in retail/outpatient pharmacy, which Mariah already covered in her answer.

After 3 years at CVS, the most amazing technology I enjoyed in hospital pharmacy is this thing you almost never see in retail pharmacies. They're called "chairs". I only knew one retail pharmacist who was allowed a chair, but that's because he was disabled and was permanently in a wheelchair. He wouldn't stand for any other kind of treatment.
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Heather’s Answer

Each pharmacy serves as an essential pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) for insurance firms. In fact, I have the privilege of working remotely for CVS!
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tina’s Answer

Different pharmacy schools may vary in their course content, graduation prerequisites, and the types of credits they accept when a student transfers into their institution.
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