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Pharmacy: What It Is and How It Works
Now fully updated for its fourth edition, What It Is and How It Works continues to provide a comprehensive review of all aspects of pharmacy, from the various roles, pathways and settings of pharmacists to information about how pharmacy works within the broader health care system.
Beginning with a brief historical perspective on the field, the book discusses the many facets of the pharmacy profession. It describes the role of pharmacists in different settings and provides information ranging from licensing requirements to working conditions, highlighting the critical role of pharmacists within the health care system. The author examines the drug use process with sections on distribution, prescribing, dispensing, and pricing. He also discusses the role of pharmacy support personnel. A chapter on informatics explores how pharmacy has evolved through information technology and automation. Additional chapters cover poison control, pharmaceutical care, pharmacy organizations, the drug approval process, and career development.
Designed for classroom and professional use, the book contains numerous tools to facilitate comprehension,
Learning objectives to help readers focus on the goals of each chapter
Informative tables and figures summarizing data
Summary paragraphs tying in salient points
Discussion questions and exercises to test assimilation
"Challenges" which place the material in broader context
Websites and references to encourage further study This valuable text provides a look into the profession that is both broad and deep, supplying a one-stop introduction to a promising career in pharmacy.
Beginning with a brief historical perspective on the field, the book discusses the many facets of the pharmacy profession. It describes the role of pharmacists in different settings and provides information ranging from licensing requirements to working conditions, highlighting the critical role of pharmacists within the health care system. The author examines the drug use process with sections on distribution, prescribing, dispensing, and pricing. He also discusses the role of pharmacy support personnel. A chapter on informatics explores how pharmacy has evolved through information technology and automation. Additional chapters cover poison control, pharmaceutical care, pharmacy organizations, the drug approval process, and career development.
Designed for classroom and professional use, the book contains numerous tools to facilitate comprehension,
Learning objectives to help readers focus on the goals of each chapter
Informative tables and figures summarizing data
Summary paragraphs tying in salient points
Discussion questions and exercises to test assimilation
"Challenges" which place the material in broader context
Websites and references to encourage further study This valuable text provides a look into the profession that is both broad and deep, supplying a one-stop introduction to a promising career in pharmacy.
397 pages, Hardcover
First published March 18, 2002
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June 27, 2026
Discovering this textbook in my curriculum at Qatar University brought a mix of confusion and academic frustration. Our program is Canadian-accredited but taught in the Middle East, yet we were assigned a text that claims from its title to explain what pharmacy is globally while being explicitly built for the United States.
From the very first chapter, this creates a massive barrier for international students like me. The text relies completely on American laws, US insurance systems, and Western data. While author William N. Kelly brings half a century of valuable healthcare experience to the page, the book functions as an introduction to the US healthcare system rather than a global overview. For students in Doha or any international hub, this heavy focus on domestic regulatory pathways and managed care organizations creates an unnecessary academic bottleneck, making much of the technical material feel entirely inapplicable to our own career paths.This geographic bias also skews the structural architecture of the book.
The concept of pharmacy is incredibly broad, but this text focuses deeply on specific American retail and institutional models while cramming other vital sectors into brief, rushed summary chapters. Important fields are grouped together under "other" categories, while some chapters feel repetitive without giving a real deep dive into global practice. Pharmacy needs to be divided cleanly into its core domains, such as industrial pharmaceutics, clinical therapeutics, and ambulatory care. These areas are massive enough to be distinct books on their own, and their importance shifts completely depending on your country and region.
It is also ironic that this book completely ignores the history and practice of pharmacy in other regions. Many parts of the world developed advanced pharmaceutical and medical systems centuries before the United States even existed. Leaving out the rich traditions of the Middle East, Asia, and Europe deprives students of an authentic look at the heritage of their profession, skipping over the roots of compounding, early pharmacopeias, and the separation of medicine from pharmacy.
Ultimately, this book was simply not designed for international students. If I were training inside the US system, this text would serve as an excellent, detailed introduction. I highly respect the continuous research, hard work, and decades of project updates poured into this fourth edition. The rapid advancement of the pharmacy profession in America is genuinely impressive, and the rest of the world can learn a lot from their clinical progress. However, international educators should adapt those benefits to our own regional needs instead of blindly copying them, and local experts must step up to document our own systems.
From the very first chapter, this creates a massive barrier for international students like me. The text relies completely on American laws, US insurance systems, and Western data. While author William N. Kelly brings half a century of valuable healthcare experience to the page, the book functions as an introduction to the US healthcare system rather than a global overview. For students in Doha or any international hub, this heavy focus on domestic regulatory pathways and managed care organizations creates an unnecessary academic bottleneck, making much of the technical material feel entirely inapplicable to our own career paths.This geographic bias also skews the structural architecture of the book.
The concept of pharmacy is incredibly broad, but this text focuses deeply on specific American retail and institutional models while cramming other vital sectors into brief, rushed summary chapters. Important fields are grouped together under "other" categories, while some chapters feel repetitive without giving a real deep dive into global practice. Pharmacy needs to be divided cleanly into its core domains, such as industrial pharmaceutics, clinical therapeutics, and ambulatory care. These areas are massive enough to be distinct books on their own, and their importance shifts completely depending on your country and region.
It is also ironic that this book completely ignores the history and practice of pharmacy in other regions. Many parts of the world developed advanced pharmaceutical and medical systems centuries before the United States even existed. Leaving out the rich traditions of the Middle East, Asia, and Europe deprives students of an authentic look at the heritage of their profession, skipping over the roots of compounding, early pharmacopeias, and the separation of medicine from pharmacy.
Ultimately, this book was simply not designed for international students. If I were training inside the US system, this text would serve as an excellent, detailed introduction. I highly respect the continuous research, hard work, and decades of project updates poured into this fourth edition. The rapid advancement of the pharmacy profession in America is genuinely impressive, and the rest of the world can learn a lot from their clinical progress. However, international educators should adapt those benefits to our own regional needs instead of blindly copying them, and local experts must step up to document our own systems.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review