Job Duties Custom List 29-1051.00 — Pharmacists
- Review prescriptions to assure accuracy, to ascertain the needed ingredients, and to evaluate their suitability.
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- Document specimens by verifying patients' and specimens' information.
- Examine cell samples to detect abnormalities in the color, shape, or size of cellular components and patterns.
- Submit slides with abnormal cell structures to pathologists for further examination.
- Prepare and analyze samples, such as Papanicolaou (PAP) smear body fluids and fine needle aspirations (FNAs), to detect abnormal conditions.
- Examine specimens, using microscopes, to evaluate specimen quality.
- Maintain effective laboratory operations by adhering to standards of specimen collection, preparation, or laboratory safety.
- Provide patient clinical data or microscopic findings to assist pathologists in the preparation of pathology reports.
- Assist pathologists or other physicians to collect cell samples by fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy or other method.
- Prepare cell samples by applying special staining techniques, such as chromosomal staining, to differentiate cells or cell components.
- Adjust, maintain, or repair laboratory equipment, such as microscopes.
- Assign tasks or coordinate task assignments to ensure adequate performance of laboratory activities.
- Attend continuing education programs that address laboratory issues.
- Examine specimens to detect abnormal hormone conditions.
- Document specimens by verifying patients' and specimens' information.
- Review prescriptions to assure accuracy, to ascertain the needed ingredients, and to evaluate their suitability.
- Provide information and advice regarding drug interactions, side effects, dosage, and proper medication storage.
- Maintain records, such as pharmacy files, patient profiles, charge system files, inventories, control records for radioactive nuclei, or registries of poisons, narcotics, or controlled drugs.
- Collaborate with other health care professionals to plan, monitor, review, or evaluate the quality or effectiveness of drugs or drug regimens, providing advice on drug applications or characteristics.
- Plan, implement, or maintain procedures for mixing, packaging, or labeling pharmaceuticals, according to policy and legal requirements, to ensure quality, security, and proper disposal.
- Order and purchase pharmaceutical supplies, medical supplies, or drugs, maintaining stock and storing and handling it properly.
- Compound and dispense medications as prescribed by doctors and dentists, by calculating, weighing, measuring, and mixing ingredients, or oversee these activities.
- Advise customers on the selection of medication brands, medical equipment, or healthcare supplies.
- Teach pharmacy students serving as interns in preparation for their graduation or licensure.
- Provide specialized services to help patients manage conditions, such as diabetes, asthma, smoking cessation, or high blood pressure.
- Refer patients to other health professionals or agencies when appropriate.
- Update or troubleshoot pharmacy information databases.
- Manage pharmacy operations, hiring or supervising staff, performing administrative duties, or buying or selling non-pharmaceutical merchandise.
- Prepare sterile solutions or infusions for use in surgical procedures, emergency rooms, or patients' homes.
- Offer health promotion or prevention activities, such as training people to use blood pressure devices or diabetes monitors.
- Publish educational information for other pharmacists, doctors, or patients.
- Assess the identity, strength, or purity of medications.
- Analyze prescribing trends to monitor patient compliance and to prevent excessive usage or harmful interactions.
- Contact insurance companies to resolve billing issues.
- Work in hospitals or clinics or for Health Management Organizations (HMOs), dispensing prescriptions, serving as a medical team consultant, or specializing in specific drug therapy areas, such as oncology or nuclear pharmacotherapy.
- Review prescriptions to assure accuracy, to ascertain the needed ingredients, and to evaluate their suitability.
- Obtain a customer's previous record, or verify a prescription with the examining optometrist or ophthalmologist.
- Measure clients' bridge and eye size, temple length, vertex distance, pupillary distance, and optical centers of eyes, using measuring devices.
- Verify that finished lenses are ground to specifications.
- Recommend specific lenses, lens coatings, and frames to suit client needs.
- Assist clients in selecting frames according to style and color, and ensure that frames are coordinated with facial and eye measurements and optical prescriptions.
- Maintain records of customer prescriptions, work orders, and payments.
- Heat, shape, or bend plastic or metal frames to adjust eyeglasses to fit clients, using pliers and hands.
- Show customers how to insert, remove, and care for their contact lenses.
- Determine clients' current lens prescriptions, when necessary, using lensometers or lens analyzers and clients' eyeglasses.
- Sell goods such as contact lenses, spectacles, sunglasses, and goods related to eyes, in general.
- Fabricate lenses to meet prescription specifications.
- Perform administrative duties, such as tracking inventory and sales, submitting patient insurance information, and performing simple bookkeeping.
- Assemble eyeglasses by cutting and edging lenses, and fitting the lenses into frames.
- Instruct clients in how to wear and care for eyeglasses.
- Supervise the training of student opticians.
- Order and purchase frames and lenses.
- Grind lens edges, or apply coatings to lenses.
- Arrange and maintain displays of optical merchandise.
- Evaluate prescriptions in conjunction with clients' vocational and avocational visual requirements.
- Prepare work orders and instructions for grinding lenses and fabricating eyeglasses.
- Repair damaged frames.
- Obtain a customer's previous record, or verify a prescription with the examining optometrist or ophthalmologist.
- Receive written prescription or refill requests and verify that information is complete and accurate.
- Enter prescription information into computer databases.
- Establish or maintain patient profiles, including lists of medications taken by individual patients.
- Maintain proper storage and security conditions for drugs.
- Receive and store incoming supplies, verify quantities against invoices, check for outdated medications in current inventory, and inform supervisors of stock needs and shortages.
- Answer telephones, responding to questions or requests.
- Price and file prescriptions that have been filled.
- Mix pharmaceutical preparations, according to written prescriptions.
- Order, label, and count stock of medications, chemicals, or supplies and enter inventory data into computer.
- Clean and help maintain equipment or work areas and sterilize glassware, according to prescribed methods.
- Prepack bulk medicines, fill bottles with prescribed medications, and type and affix labels.
- Compute charges for medication or equipment dispensed to hospital patients and enter data in computer.
- Prepare and process medical insurance claim forms and records.
- Transfer medication from vials to the appropriate number of sterile, disposable syringes, using aseptic techniques.
- Restock intravenous (IV) supplies and add measured drugs or nutrients to IV solutions under sterile conditions to prepare IV packs for various uses, such as chemotherapy medication.
- Maintain and merchandise home healthcare products or services.
- Price stock and mark items for sale.
- Assist customers by answering simple questions, locating items, or referring them to the pharmacist for medication information.
- Operate cash registers to accept payment from customers.
- Supply and monitor robotic machines that dispense medicine into containers and label the containers.
- Deliver medications or pharmaceutical supplies to patients, nursing stations, or surgery.
- Receive written prescription or refill requests and verify that information is complete and accurate.
- Review prescription, diagnosis, patient chart, and identification.
- Position patients for treatment with accuracy, according to prescription.
- Administer prescribed doses of radiation to specific body parts, using radiation therapy equipment according to established practices and standards.
- Follow principles of radiation protection for patient, self, and others.
- Enter data into computer and set controls to operate or adjust equipment or regulate dosage.
- Check radiation therapy equipment to ensure proper operation.
- Observe and reassure patients during treatment and report unusual reactions to physician or turn equipment off if unexpected adverse reactions occur.
- Educate, prepare, and reassure patients and their families by answering questions, providing physical assistance, and reinforcing physicians' advice regarding treatment reactions or post-treatment care.
- Maintain records, reports, or files as required, including such information as radiation dosages, equipment settings, or patients' reactions.
- Check for side effects, such as skin irritation, nausea, or hair loss to assess patients' reaction to treatment.
- Prepare or construct equipment, such as immobilization, treatment, or protection devices.
- Help physicians, radiation oncologists, or clinical physicists to prepare physical or technical aspects of radiation treatment plans, using information about patient condition and anatomy.
- Calculate actual treatment dosages delivered during each session.
- Photograph treated area of patient and process film.
- Act as liaison with physicist and supportive care personnel.
- Schedule patients for treatment times.
- Provide assistance to other healthcare personnel during dosimetry procedures and tumor localization.
- Train or supervise student or subordinate radiotherapy technologists.
- Store, sterilize, or prepare the special applicators containing the radioactive substance implanted by the physician.
- Assist in the preparation of sealed radioactive materials, such as cobalt, radium, cesium, or isotopes, for use in radiation treatments.
- Conduct most treatment sessions independently, in accordance with the long-term treatment plan and under the general direction of the patient's physician.
- Implement appropriate follow-up care plans.
- Review prescription, diagnosis, patient chart, and identification.
- Verify the identity of patient or operative site.
- Monitor and maintain aseptic technique throughout procedures.
- Cover patients with surgical drapes to create and maintain a sterile operative field.
- Coordinate or participate in the positioning of patients, using body stabilizing equipment or protective padding to provide appropriate exposure for the procedure or to protect against nerve damage or circulation impairment.
- Maintain an unobstructed operative field, using surgical retractors, sponges, or suctioning and irrigating equipment.
- Prepare and apply sterile wound dressings.
- Apply sutures, staples, clips, or other materials to close skin, facia, or subcutaneous wound layers.
- Discuss with surgeon the nature of the surgical procedure, including operative consent, methods of operative exposure, diagnostic or laboratory data, or patient-advanced directives or other needs.
- Determine availability of necessary equipment or supplies for operative procedures.
- Clamp, ligate, or cauterize blood vessels to control bleeding during surgical entry, using hemostatic clamps, suture ligatures, or electrocautery equipment.
- Assist with patient resuscitation during cardiac arrest or other life-threatening events.
- Obtain or inspect sterile or non-sterile surgical equipment, instruments, or supplies.
- Operate sterilizing devices.
- Pass instruments or supplies to surgeon during procedure.
- Monitor patient intra-operative status, including patient position, vital signs, or volume and color of blood.
- Assist in the insertion, positioning, or suturing of closed-wound drainage systems.
- Assist members of surgical team with gowning or gloving.
- Gather, arrange, or assemble instruments or supplies.
- Coordinate with anesthesia personnel to maintain patient temperature.
- Assist in applying casts, splints, braces, or similar devices.
- Transport patients to operating room.
- Remove patient hair or disinfect incision sites to prepare patient for surgery.
- Incise tissue layers in lower extremities to harvest veins.
- Postoperatively inject a subcutaneous local anesthetic agent to reduce pain.
- Insert or remove urinary bladder catheters.
- Assist in volume replacement or autotransfusion techniques.
- Assess skin integrity or other body conditions upon completion of the procedure to determine if damage has occurred from body positioning.
- Adjust and maintain operating room temperature, humidity, or lighting, according to surgeon's specifications.
- Verify the identity of patient or operative site.
- Review procedure requests and patients' medical histories to determine applicability of procedures and radioisotopes to be used.
- Prepare comprehensive interpretive reports of findings.
- Perform or interpret the outcomes of diagnostic imaging procedures including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), nuclear cardiology treadmill studies, mammography, or ultrasound.
- Document the performance, interpretation, or outcomes of all procedures performed.
- Communicate examination results or diagnostic information to referring physicians, patients, or families.
- Obtain patients' histories from electronic records, patient interviews, dictated reports, or by communicating with referring clinicians.
- Review or transmit images and information using picture archiving or communications systems.
- Confer with medical professionals regarding image-based diagnoses.
- Recognize or treat complications during and after procedures, including blood pressure problems, pain, oversedation, or bleeding.
- Develop or monitor procedures to ensure adequate quality control of images.
- Provide counseling to radiologic patients to explain the processes, risks, benefits, or alternative treatments.
- Establish or enforce standards for protection of patients or personnel.
- Coordinate radiological services with other medical activities.
- Instruct radiologic staff in desired techniques, positions, or projections.
- Participate in continuing education activities to maintain and develop expertise.
- Participate in quality improvement activities including discussions of areas where risk of error is high.
- Perform interventional procedures such as image-guided biopsy, percutaneous transluminal angioplasty, transhepatic biliary drainage, or nephrostomy catheter placement.
- Develop treatment plans for radiology patients.
- Administer radioisotopes to clinical patients or research subjects.
- Advise other physicians of the clinical indications, limitations, assessments, or risks of diagnostic and therapeutic applications of radioactive materials.
- Calculate, measure, or prepare radioisotope dosages.
- Check and approve the quality of diagnostic images before patients are discharged.
- Compare nuclear medicine procedures with other types of procedures, such as computed tomography, ultrasonography, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, and angiography.
- Direct nuclear medicine technologists or technicians regarding desired dosages, techniques, positions, and projections.
- Establish and enforce radiation protection standards for patients and staff.
- Formulate plans and procedures for nuclear medicine departments.
- Monitor handling of radioactive materials to ensure that established procedures are followed.
- Prescribe radionuclides and dosages to be administered to individual patients.
- Teach nuclear medicine, diagnostic radiology, or other specialties at graduate educational level.
- Test dosage evaluation instruments and survey meters to ensure they are operating properly.
- Review procedure requests and patients' medical histories to determine applicability of procedures and radioisotopes to be used.
