Source:THE
HINDU EDUCATION PLUS
The six-year course for
Intermediate pass students is now treated on par with pharma courses across
the world
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GOOD TIMES: Six-year Pharm.D course has come as a boon for aspirants.
Hyderabad is often being termed as
the Pharma capital of the country reflecting the strong presence of not only
pharmaceutical industries but also the talent pool available here.
In the last few years pharmacy
courses were being treated on par with engineering courses given the projected
potential of the course career-wise.
But there were some limitations with
the four-year pharmacy course offered in India, particularly for those aiming
to move abroad where pharmacy is rated much higher than medical and engineering
courses. But the introduction of six-year Pharm.D course by the Pharmacy
Council of India (PCI) has come as a boon for the aspirants. The six-year
course for Intermediate pass students is now treated on par with pharma courses
across the world.
“Earlier, a graduate of pharmacy in
India was not being considered for any job on the clinical side abroad.
Essentially they were unfit to take up jobs as clinical pharmacists, where a
pharmacist would educate the patient about the prescribed drugs. But with this
course they will be treated on par with any other pharma graduate in the West,”
says Jaipal Reddy of the A.P. Pharmacy College Managements Association.
While a physician’s job is just to
diagnose and prescribe the medicine, the pharmacist has to advise the patient
on correct drugs, correct doses, correct formulations, and correct times to
take the medicine. But that practice has not existed in India with pharma
education laying total emphasis on the industry side while totally ignoring the
clinical side of pharma education. The Pharm.D course will plug that gap.
The programme enables graduates to
understand the delivery of comprehensive health care, understand the diagnosis
and the rational selection of drugs, understand the pharmacokinetic principles
to improve dosage regimens for individual patients, retrieve, interpret and
report drug information from pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences apart from
knowing what factors affect initiating, maintaining, modifying or discounting
drug therapy.
A student of Pharm. D would have to
visit hospitals in second, third and fourth years and during the fifth year,
there would be compulsory hospital ward visits and the final sixth year would
be that of residency like that of a house surgeon for medicine.
Job opportunities
The role of a pharmacist has changed
drastically over the years with the constant expansion of health care
programmes and the increasing need for quality pharmaceutical care. The growth
of this sectors has thrown up diverse career options that include Community
Pharmacy, Geriatric Pharmacy, Home Health Care, Hospital Pharmacy, Governmental
agencies, Managed care, Pharmacoeconomics, Pharmacy education apart from Pharmaceutical
industry.
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