[e-drug] Brain drain of pharmacists (cont'd)

e-drug
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E-drug: Brain drain of pharmacists (cont'd)
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Hi All,

Thank you Eva for your suggestions. I believe part of the problem
relates to pharmacy undergraduate and post-graduate training.
Students are exposed to the clinical role of the pharmacist, to
therapeutic drug monitoring etc, but when placed in the practical
world, especially in the developing country context, the expectations
created through the training cannot be met because the demands on
the pharmacists are different. Job satisfaction may not be met since
the role of this pharmacist is often perceived as being a clerical one.
Apart from the Masters in Public Health Pharmacy Programme at
Boston University are there other Pharmacy Schools that offer
programmes and support in public health pharmacy?

In the field of medicine there is community health as a speciality - why
are we not considering this as an extension of our roles? I worked as
the provincial coordinator of the Essential Drugs Programme in a
Province in South Africa and the skills I needed for my job had to be
developed through short courses offered largely by the WHO in
collaboration with Departments of Pharmacology. Whilst funding to
attend such courses are available, many of these courses are
expensive for the locals. We need to see more staff with qualifications
in public health, epidemiology teaching in Pharmacy Schools. Support
for this should also come through the professional pharmacy
societies, or councils, where a category of registration for public
health pharmacists should exist.

Regards,

Aarti Patel
Lecturer
School of Pharmacy
University of Otago
PO Box 913, Dunedin
New Zealand
e-mail: aarti.patel@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

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