Eligibility: 10th/12th pass in any stream.

Duration: 6 months

Affiliation: Bharat Sevak Samaj, National Development Agency, Promoted by Government of India.

Career Prospects: Hospitals, private clinics, diagnostic centres, blood banks, research and development departments of pharmaceutical companies.

Community pharmacists are the health professionals most accessible to the public. They supply medicines in accordance with a prescription or, when legally permitted, sell them without a prescription.

In addition to ensuring an accurate supply of appropriate products, their professional activities also cover counselling of patients at the time of dispensing of prescription and non-prescription drugs, drug information to health professionals, patients and the general public, and participation in health-promotion programmes. They maintain links with other health professionals in primary health care. Pharmacists have progressively undertaken the additional task of ensuring the quality of the products they supply.

The main activities of community pharmacists are described below.
 Processing of prescriptions
 Care of patients or clinical pharmacy
 Monitoring of drug utilization
 Extemporaneous preparation and small-scale manufacture of medicines
 Traditional and alternative medicines
 Responding to symptoms of minor ailments
 Informing health care professionals and the public
 Health promotion