A Pharmacy

 

A pharmacy (known also as a chemist's or in American English a drugstore) is a place where pharmacists (chemists) practise the profession of pharmacy. In the United States and Canada, drug stores commonly sell not only medicines, but also miscellaneous items such as candy (sweets), cosmetics, and magazines, as well as light refreshments or groceries. The people working in a pharmacy are called pharmacists or chemists (British English). These people can recognise simple diseases and give drugs for some of them.

More strictly a pharmacy / pharmacy counter is where you can buy prescription drugs. Certain drugs are special, because they can be addictive, or they change the way other drugs act, or they need to be taken in a special way. These drugs cannot simply be bought at a pharmacy. A prescription is necessary to get them. Medical doctors give out prescriptions, which can then be used to get the drug.

Many pharmacies do not sell drugs only. They also sell beauty products and hygiene-related products, like tampons for women and contraceptives.

Pharmacies are also located within hospitals and nursing homes and function as a department of these larger organizations. Such pharmacies are known within the pharmacy industry as "hospital pharmacies" to distinguish from "retail" or "community" pharmacies. Pharmacists in hospital pharmacies often have more complex medications whereas pharmacists in community pharmacies often have more complex business and customer relations issues.

The icon ['aɪkɔn] most commonly associated with the practise of pharmacy is the mortar and pestle. Apothecary [ə'pɔθɪkərɪ] is an older term used for pharmacy and pharmacists.

 

All medical personnel---doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies, clerks---who have direct contact with patients should be properly trained and appropriately licensed. All staff---medical and non-medical---must be fully informed about and adequately trained regarding privacy matters, and ought obey proper protocols for handling all aspects of patients' care; for example, medical records, medications, supplies (such as syringes, bandages, tanks, tubing, catheters), food and linens.

 

Institutional staff dedicated to patient relations can provide a communications pathway for patients and patients' families to communicate their concerns to the administration, in order to resolve difficulties and avoid unnecessary deaths or lawsuits.

 

There are more than sixty-five hundred hospitals in the United States that are described as short-stay or long-term, depending on the length of time a patient spends before discharge. Short-stay facilities include community, teaching, and public hospitals. Sometimes short-stay hospitals are referred to as acute care facilities because the services provided within them aim to help resolve pressing problems or medical conditions, such as a heart attack, rather than long-term chronic conditions such as the need for rehabilitation following a head injury. Long-term hospitals are usually rehabilitation and psychiatric hospitals or facilities for the treatment of tuberculosis or other pulmonary (respiratory) diseases.

Hospitals also are distinguished by their ownership, scope of services, and whether they are teaching hospitals with academic affiliations. Hospitals may be operated as proprietary (for-profit) businesses, owned either by corporations or individuals such as the physicians on staff, or they may be voluntary—owned by not-for-profit corporations, religious organizations, or operated by federal, state, or city governments. Voluntary, not-for-profit hospitals are usually governed by a board of trustees, selected from among community business and civic leaders, who serve without pay to oversee hospital operations.

 

Most community hospitals offer emergency services as well as a range of inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical services. There are more than one thousand "tertiary" hospitals in the United States, which provide highly specialized services such as neonatal intensive care units (for care of sick newborns), trauma services, or cardiovascular surgery programs. The majority of tertiary hospitals serve as teaching hospitals.

 

Teaching hospitals are those community and tertiary hospitals affiliated with medical schools, nursing schools, or allied-health professions training programs. Teaching hospitals are the primary sites for training new physicians where interns and residents work under the supervision of experienced physicians. Nonteaching hospitals also may maintain affiliations with medical schools and some also serve as sites for nursing and allied-health professions students as well as physicians-in-training.

Community Hospitals

 

The most common type of hospital in the United States is the community, or general, hospital. Community hospitals, where most people receive care, are typically small, with fifty to five hundred beds. These hospitals normally provide quality care for routine medical and surgical problems. Since the early 1980s, many smaller hospitals were closed down because they were no longer profitable. The larger ones, usually located in cities and adjacent suburbs, are often equipped with a full complement of medical and surgical personnel and state-of-the-art equipment.

 

Some community hospitals are nonprofit corporations, supported by local funding. These include hospitals supported by religious, cooperative, or osteopathic organizations. In the 1990s, increasing numbers of not-for-profit community hospitals have converted their ownership status, becoming proprietary hospitals that are owned and operated on a for-profit basis by corporations. These hospitals have joined investor-owned corporations because they need additional financial resources to maintain their existence in an increasingly competitive industry. Investor-owned corporations acquire not for-profit hospitals to build market share, expand their provider networks, and penetrate new health care markets.

Teaching Hospitals

 

Most teaching hospitals, which provide clinical training for medical students and other health care professionals, are affiliated with a medical school and may have several hundred beds. Many of the physicians on staff at the hospital also hold teaching positions at the university affiliated with the hospital, in addition to teaching physicians-in-training at the bedsides of the patients. Patients in teaching hospitals understand that they may be examined by medical students and residents in addition to their primary "attending" physicians.

 

One advantage of obtaining care at a university-affiliated teaching hospital is the opportunity to receive treatment from highly qualified physicians with access to the most advanced technology and equipment. A disadvantage is the inconvenience and invasion of privacy that may result from multiple examinations performed by residents and students. When compared with smaller community hospitals, some teaching hospitals have reputations for being very impersonal; however, patients with complex, unusual, or difficult diagnoses usually benefit from the presence of acknowledged medical experts and more comprehensive resources available at these facilities.

Public Hospitals

 

Public hospitals are owned and operated by federal, state, or city governments. Many have a continuing tradition of caring for the poor. They are usually located in the inner cities and are often in precarious financial situations because many of their patients are unable to pay for services. These hospitals depend heavily on Medicaid payments supplied by local, state, and federal agencies or on grants from local governments. Medicaid is a program run by both the state and federal government for the provision of health care insurance to persons younger than sixty-five years of age who cannot afford to pay for private health insurance. The federal government matches the states' contribution to provide a certain minimal level of available coverage, and the states may offer additional services at their own expense.

 

Well-known public hospitals include Bellevue Hospital Center (New York City), Parkland Memorial Hospital (Dallas, Texas), Truman Medical Center (Kansas City, Missouri), University of Southern California Medical Center (Los Angeles, California), and Temple University Hospital (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Many public hospitals are also university-affiliated teaching hospitals.

 

TREATING SOCIETY'S MOST VULNERABLE MEMBERS. Increasingly, public hospitals must bear the burden of the weaknesses in the nation's health care system. The major problems in U.S. society are readily apparent in the emergency rooms and corridors of public hospitals—poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, crime-related and domestic violence, and infectious diseases such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and tuberculosis.