Thursday, August 31, 2006
A consultant pharmacist is a specialized pharmacist who focuses on reviewing and managing the medication regimens of patients, particularly those in institutional settings such as nursing homes.
Consultant pharmacists are medication therapy experts who take responsibility for their patients medication-related needs; ensure that their patient's medications are the most appropriate, the most effective, the safest possible, and are used correctly; and identify, resolve, and prevent medication-related problems that may interfere with the goals of therapy. Consultant pharmacists manage and improve drug therapy and improve the quality of life of the senior population and other individuals residing in a variety of environments, including hospitals, nursing facilities, subacute care and assisted living facilities, psychiatric hospitals, hospice care, and home- and community-based care.
The primary association representing consultant pharmacists in the United States is the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, though several other pharmacy associations also represent consultant pharmacists in various respects.
Unlike retail pharmacists and hospital pharmacists, most consultant pharmacists generally own their own practice or work for one of a handful of specialized pharmacy companies, the largest of which is Omnicare. Many consultant pharmacists do not even dispense drugs, and in many ways they resemble physicians more than the traditional concept of a retail pharmacist.
Recently, consultant pharmacists have started to expand into the realm of "Senior Care Pharmacy," a term used to refer to the practice of consultant pharmacy for seniors in non-institutional settings. As the American Post-World War II baby boom approaches retirement, this practice is becoming much more widely sought. Many seniors, while not requiring nursing home care, still have complex medication regimens, often prescribed by numerous non-coordinating physicians. A senior care pharmacist works with these patents to resolve conflicts in their medication regimen and to review its effectiveness in addressing their medical conditions.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Psychology is an academic and applied field relating the study of the human mind, brain, and behavior. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the handling of mental illness.
Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in seeking to capture explanatory generalizations regarding the mental function and overt behavior of individuals, while the other disciplines rely more deeply on field studies and historical methods for extracting descriptive generalizations. In practice, however, there is relatively a lot of cross-fertilization that takes place among the various fields. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is mostly concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behavior, and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves, though the subfield of neurophysiology combines the study of the actual neural processes with the study of the mental effects they have subjectively formed
Research psychology
Research psychology encompasses the study of behavior for application in academic settings, and contains numerous areas. It contains the areas of abnormal psychology, biological psychology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, developmental psychology, personality psychology and social psychology. Research psychology is contrasted with applied psychology.
Abnormal psychology
Abnormal psychology is the study of abnormal psychological behavior in order to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of performance. Abnormal psychology studies the nature of psychopathology and its causes, and this knowledge is useful to treating patients with psychological disorders in clinical psychology.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the handbook used most often in diagnosing mental disorders in the United States. The present version of the book is known as DSM IV-TR. It lists a set of disorders and provides complete descriptions on what constitutes a disorder, such as Major Depression or Anxiety Disorder.