Doctors vs. Pharmacists –
Who Knows More about Drugs and Their Effects?


If the recent debate over health care in the United States has taught people anything, it is that they should be very wary of who is making decisions about their health and how those people come to reach those decisions. There have been a lot of complaints levied against doctors, especially in the past year or so as the health care debate raged on. These complaints have said, among other things, that doctors are only prescribing some medications for patients based upon which drug company pays them the most to deal those drugs out. While this may certainly be going on with some doctors, it also raises the question of, if you can’t your doctor to prescribe the right medication for you, who do you trust?

Some may say that they would prefer if their pharmacist made the decision about what Canadian medication they should be on rather than their doctor. While it is easy to see why some would think that way, the bigger question is, would they really be more able to make a medical decision regarding your health? Many pharmacists will tell you that they feel they could do the same thing that doctors do as they learned a lot of same things in school that doctors had to learn. While this is certainly true, that there is a lot of overlap in what doctors and pharmacists learn during their education, you also have to figure in all of the things doctors pick up during their years of actually practicing that the pharmacists have never been exposed to.

Part of a doctor’s formal education comes from several years of doing what is called “residency”. This a time in which doctors in training on put into real life medical situations, in real hospitals or whatnot, with actual doctors. Even though they learn a great deal of things during their time in school, nothing prepares you for being a doctor like actually serving right beside them during real life scenarios. Just any other educational training, you can get a foundation worked out, but nothing will prepare you like actual on-the-job training. So while pharmacists may believe they can easily prescribe you any Canadian medication without these extra years of training that doctors receive, do you really want to trust this way of thinking?

Even though pharmacists should not be making decisions about what medications you should be taking, that certainly doesn’t mean you should ignore their advice regarding the Canadian medications you are taking if this happens to be Cialis or any other medication.