E-drug: Undergraduate pharmacotherapy teaching (cont'd)
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Dear All,
Rina has formulated a lot of questions about the pharmacy education,
and rightfully so. While the medical education has developed into
problem based teaching in many countries, the pharmacy education
has not followed.
One of the reasons that this has not happened is without doubt the
quite drastic changes in the pharmacy profession which have occurred
since the beginning of this century. The basic sciences have become
much less important for the majority of the students, but of course it
will be hard to find teachers in especially the classic basic sciences
(anorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, biology and pharmacognosy)
who will acknowledge this fact and they struggle for survival.
In the mean time in most schools of pharmacy there is a battle going
on to find time to teach applied sciences, especially pharmacotherapy
and applied integrated pharmaceutics like clinical pharmacy and
pharmaceutical care.
One of the other reasons which are often mentioned for the slow
changes in the pharmacy curriculum, is that the pharmaceutical
industry still needs the chemical and biochemical experts which are
currently only being educated by pharmacy faculties. The latter seems
not a real reason. In most schools of pharmacy over 90% of the
students finally will become community pharmacists. It seems much
more important for society that this 90% will be able to provide their
services in a scientific responsible way, than that the remaining
5-10% is highly educated. An early split in the education therefore
often has been proposed, but can only occasionally be found.
The European association of Faculties of Pharmacy is currently trying
to develop a new, pharmaceutical care based curriculum. The
president of the organisation is Prof. A.T. Florence from the London
School of Pharmacy. He will certainly have much more information on
this important topic.
Foppe
J.W.F. van Mil, PhD/PharmD
Margrietlaan 1, 9471 CT Zuidlaren
The Netherlands
Tel +31 50 4094766
Fax +31 50 4090732
e-mail: jwfvmil@wxs.nl
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