15 Top Skills for Pharmacists

Pharmacists dispense drugs prescribed by physicians and other health practitioners and provide information to patients about medications and their use. May advise physicians and other health practitioners on the selection, dosage, interactions, and side effects of medications.

Here are the top 15 skills for Pharmacists of all levels in the job market today:

	Skill	Proficiency	Description
1	Pharmacy	N/A	Pharmacy is the knowledge area focused on the study, preparation, dispensation, and review of drugs, aiming to ensure safe and effective use of pharmaceuticals.
2	Pharmacy Practices	Competent	Pharmacy practices are the accepted norms of the profession of pharmacy.
3	Pharmacy Operations	Competent	Pharmacy operations is a term used in pharmacy to describe the specific activities carried out by a pharmacy.
4	Medication Administration	Competent	Medication administration is the process by which a patient takes a medicine, the three major categories of drug administration being enteral (via the human gastrointestinal tract), injection, and other (dermal, nasal, ophthalmic, otologic, and urogenital).
5	Medical Prescriptions	Advanced Beginner - Competent	A prescription, often abbreviated ℞ or Rx, is a formal communication from a physician or other registered health-care professional to a pharmacist, authorizing them to dispense a specific prescription drug for a specific patient.
6	Drug Administration	Competent	Drug administration is the process of supplying drugs to patients in a healthcare setting.
7	Pharmacy Law	Advanced Beginner	Pharmacy law is the branch of law that governs the practice of pharmacy.
8	Order Processing	Advanced Beginner - Competent	Order processing is the process or work-flow associated with the picking, packing and delivery of the packed items to a shipping carrier and is a key element of order fulfillment.
9	Inventory Control	Novice - Advanced Beginner	Inventory control or stock control can be broadly defined as the process of ensuring that the right amount of supply is available within a business.
10	Quality Assurance (QA)	Advanced Beginner - Competent	Quality assurance (QA) is a way of preventing mistakes and defects in products and services and avoiding problems when delivering them to customers; which ISO 9000 defines as "part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled".
11	Maintaining Cleanliness	Advanced Beginner	Maintaining cleanliness is the process of keeping a workplace or facility clean and free from germs, dirt, trash, or waste.
12	Inoculation	Competent	Inoculation is a set of methods of artificially inducing immunity against various infectious diseases.
13	Competence	Competent	Competence is a a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job.
14	Data Entry	Competent	Data entry is the process of feeding information to a computer (through keyboard, mouse or other tools) for planned computer-based analysis or processing.
15	Customer Support	Competent - Proficient	Customer support is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product.

For each skill, we provide a descriptive proficiency framework of 5 levels from Novice to Master, with descriptions of what each level looks like in practice where available.

For example, Medical Prescriptions: a prescription, often abbreviated ℞ or Rx, is a formal communication from a physician or other registered health-care professional to a pharmacist, authorizing them to dispense a specific prescription drug for a specific patient.

The proficiency level Competent (3) for Medical Prescriptions means:

Interprets complex prescriptions with multiple medications and instructions, using knowledge of pharmacology, drug interactions, and medical abbreviations.
Understands and applies knowledge of drug interactions to check prescriptions, using resources such as drug reference guides and clinical decision support systems.
Communicates effectively with healthcare professionals to clarify prescriptions, using effective communication skills and professional terminology.
Provides patient counseling on medication use, side effects, and interactions, using effective communication skills and patient-centered care principles.
Adheres to legal and ethical guidelines in dispensing medication, including maintaining patient confidentiality, obtaining informed consent, and acting in the best interest of the patient.

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