IMPLEMENT IN LETTER AND SPIRIT

The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) has recently come out with the ‘Pharmacist Recruitment, Promotion and Service Regulations, 2025’ to regulate the recruitment process, promotion, service condition and job responsibilities of pharmacy professionals in various cadres of pharmacy services in the country. The regulation classifies pharmacy services into Schedule I, Schedule II and Schedule III posts, while job descriptions and place of posting of different cadre or grade of pharmacy officers are stipulated in Schedule IV. No doubt, the new Regulations will create a standardized framework for the recruitment, promotion, and service conditions of pharmacists across the country. The regulations propose a well-defined career progression pathway, uniform eligibility criteria, and clearly delineated professional responsibilities, helping to strengthen the pharmacy workforce while ensuring consistent standards of pharmaceutical care and patient safety in healthcare institutions. Clearly, the new Regulation provides long-awaited clarity on pharmacy practice and clearly delineates the professional roles, responsibilities and services that pharmacists are expected to deliver. It is a fact that the pharmacists working in government health services have long faced challenges arising from the absence of a clearly defined cadre structure, inconsistent nomenclature across States, and limited opportunities for career advancement. To this end, the new Regulation marks a significant step towards addressing these issues by establishing a uniform framework for recruitment, designation, and promotion. Th new recruitment regulations will definitely address long-standing cadre and promotion gaps for pharmacists. 

There can be no two opinions about the fact that it is a landmark moment for the pharmacy profession in India, and one that the pharmacist fraternity has long awaited as the regulations will bring in greater clarity, professional recognition, and structured career progression for pharmacists serving in public healthcare institutions across the country. By establishing a six-tier cadre from pharmacy officer up to joint director (Pharmacy), along with parallel specialized cadres for drug information and clinical pharmacy officers, PCI has given pharmacists a transparent, merit-based career ladder that recognises both seniority and qualification. What is particularly encouraging is the recognition of Clinical Pharmacy and Drug Information Pharmacy as distinct, specialized roles with their own job responsibilities ranging from medication therapy management and drug utilization review to patient counselling and adverse drug event monitoring. This formally acknowledges that the modern pharmacist's role extends well beyond dispensing, into genuine clinical and advisory functions integrated with the healthcare team. In the international level, the duty of a pharmacist is fast evolving from a mere dispenser of medicines in a retail medical store. Checking drug dosage, drug-drug interactions, drug-allergy interactions, drug food interactions, patient counselling, etc are all now becoming part and parcel of a pharmacist's job. Pharmacists of today are expected to interact with patients, doctors and nurses in a collaborative model as is the case with the developed countries. In countries like US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, Ireland and even Ethiopia, clinical pharmacists are an integral part of the healthcare system and work along with physicians and nurses efficiently. The focus of pharmacy practice in developed countries has shifted from product centric to patient centric with the implementation of modified pharmacy practice regulations favouring patient safety. But in India, the situation is entirely different as the pharmacy professionals are yet to get the kind of respect actually they deserve. Now with this new Regulation, the situation will change. The PCI has done its job well. But, it has more works to do to ensure that the new Regulations are implemented by Central as well as State heath departments in letter and spirit.