An overview of pharmacy education in India

The beginning of pharmaceutical education in India was initiated at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1932 by Professor M. L. Schroff. From there it has been a long journey of almost 80 years for this profession in this country. The enactment of the Pharmacy Act 1948 established the statutory regulation of pharmacy institutions in India.

The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) was established in 1949 under “Ministry of Health” and the first education regulations (ER) framed in 1953, which were subsequently amended in 1972, 1981 and 1991. On the other hand, the pharmacy education has never been part of paramedical team and hence, its development has been quite unique and quite different from rest of the world.

 Pharmacy Council of India and Pharmacy Act were created to establish minimum qualification required to be a pharmacist. The role of pharmacist in the society was never been given its due place and did not grow due to less paying job compared to job in industry. This would have been the reason for transfer of pharmacy education from PCI to All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) under the “Ministry of Human Resource Development”.

Currently, PCI and AICTE regulate pharmacy profession and education respectively in India. Both of these regulatory bodies have been doing a regulatory function without bothering to create a permanent mechanism of updating curriculum along with development in the field. In short, it can be said that evolution of pharmacy education has been quite confusing and developed like a vagabond. Hence, evolution of pharmacy education has been primarily due to evolution of pharmaceutical industries and has lot of impact under curriculum of “Bachelor and Master in Pharmacy” programmes.

Similarly, medical education in India grew with less focus on research and development and hence, India produced medical graduates more with clinical sense acquired through experience and less of a doctors with analytical bent of mind. Due to tight junctions at the entry point, integration of the thoughts of medical sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, nursing, engineering sciences and basic sciences have never taken place. Primarily, this resulted in isolated development of medical education without integration with other sciences including pharmaceutical. It is also true in case of pharmacy education. It may also one of the reason of pharmacy education not to be a part of healthcare system.

Today, the global institutes are moving towards excellence in research and capability building in order to better meet the requirements of 21st century. This forces us to evaluate status of pharmacy education in India. There is a rapid transition in pharmacy profession worldwide and in the era of globalization, we cannot be silent spectators. If we have to compete with the rest of the world and become guiding torch for rest of the world, we will have to become proactive. It means, we have to define the goals of pharmacy education for present and future and re-frame our curriculum according to defined goals to meet the global challenges.

In the past decade, the technical education in India has spread its roots at an amazing rate. On the other hand, there is sharp decrease in interest and overall admissions to undergraduate programme (B. Pharmacy) in pharmacy during the last three academic years. This decline may be attributed due to changed trends in pharmaceutical industry which has become primarily research and marketing oriented from production oriented. Role of knowledge in giving in increasing employability of the students has become need of the hour. Simultaneously, other facets of pharmacy profession should be given adequate attention in curriculum development and in creation of knowledge based manpower for service of the society. The products of this form of education lack the much needed professionalism and rational thinking required for problem solving. So, the situation demands a nudge for the system to ensure its revival in order to better meet the needs of 21st century.

Pitfalls in the present system

• Indistinct and unspecialised coursework
• Inability to attract meritorious students into the course
• Tight boundaries and less integration with other sciences
• Lack of social, industrial and clinical exposure
• Inability to inculcate problem solving attitude in students
• Research output from institutions rarely lead to commercialization and revenue generation
• Change in the mind sets from information impartation to knowledge based
• Given the market needs for trained man power, teaching takes total priority over research in our Universities

Solutions

• Building professionalism
• Promoting pharmacy course to top preference
• Improving industrial and practical exposure
• Implementing Innovation Ecosystem

The concept of Innovation Ecosystem is meant for creating economic value from scientific research.  It involves the interaction between the elements, which together turn an idea into a process, product or service resulting in national economic growth (Figure 1).

A lesson can be taken from China to learn how to innovate by commercialization, as opposed to constant research and perfecting the theory. They’re happy to do three to four rounds of commercialization to get an idea right, whereas in the West companies spend the same amount of time on research, testing, and validation before trying to take products to market. When the Chinese get an idea, they test it in the marketplace for its perfection, work on them in parallel with finding out what the customer really likes and adapting to that.

In India steps have been initiated under the aegis of Mission REACH (Relevance and Excellence in Achieving new heights in educational institutions), which aims at upgrading selected science and engineering colleges in the country as ‘Centers of Relevance and Excellence’ to broaden the level off education and also to meet the scientific and technological manpower requirements of India in advanced areas promising to show up on the horizon in the upcoming years.
 
Applying principles of TQM to pharmacy education
The concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) although developed by an American was successfully implemented by Japan in their recovery from World War II. The concept of TQM is applicable to academics. Many educators believe that the concept of TQM provides guiding principles for needed educational reform. Education is a fast moving commodity in the market and is mainly business oriented which means it should give some profit to the undertaker. TQM is a philosophy for perfection and continuous improvement in services offered to someone or one's own performance. The TQM principles which are most salient to educational reform are as follows:

Synergistic relationship: According to this principle, an organization must focus, first and foremost, on its “suppliers” and “customers”. In other words, teamwork and collaboration are essential. The concept of synergy suggests that performance and production is enhanced by pooling the talent and experience of individuals. In a classroom, teacher-student teams are the equivalent of industry’s front-line workers. The product of their successful work together is the development of the student’s capabilities, interests, and character.

Continuous improvement and self evaluation: TQM emphasizes self-evaluation as part of a continuous improvement process. In addition, this principle also laminates to the focusing on students’ strengths, individual learning styles, and different types of intelligences.

A system of ongoing process: The recognition of the organization as a system and the work done within the organization must be seen as an ongoing process. Quality speaks to working on the system, which must be examined to identify and eliminate the flawed processes that allow its participants to fail.

Leadership: The upper level provides proposes basic way of functioning, provides quality staff, while the lower level are directly linked to the students as lecturers who perform the most important functions of the whole system. The school teachers must establish the context in which students can best achieve their potential.

Conclusion
It  is difficult to conclude this article because it needs incorporation of ideas of many of my colleagues, friends and philosophers. We have to read and understand the development pattern of pharmacy education in many more developed countries to create our framework which may take the pharmacy education back to its glory. It is  essential to understand the trends in the world before defining the course of development of pharmacy education in India. In case, we have to acquire the status of a developed nation, we have to become trend -setters rather than followers in the future.