In order to withstand the ever changing global healthcare scenario and the growing demand for medicinal and pharmaceutical products to heal diseases, it is high time that the Indian pharmacy education system constantly upgrade itself to compete on par with the global standards and enable our professionals to take up newer challenges with confidence.
While on one hand when the Indian Pharmaceutical industry is attracting global attention for its superiority in manufacturing quality and affordable medicines, the quality of pharmacy education system on the other hand has been a cause of concern as it has failed to stand to international standards.
Though during the past one decade pharmacy education in India has witnessed tremendous expansion, the standard in education have been eroded by mediocrity. To contain this there is an urgent need for the state and central governments to initiate an academic exercise to revamp the existing curriculum, keeping in pace with current and emerging trends in the field of pharmacy.
Despite making global inroads in to the pharmaceutical manufacturing, unfortunately enough emphasis was not laid on strengthening the education system. Components of Community Pharmacy, Hospital and Clinical pharmacy have not been included while designing curriculum at diploma and degree levels of teaching. Even, the curriculum of industrial pharmacy covered in B.Pharm at some universities is outdated.
Many analysts who have studied the pharmacy education system are of the view that the present admission process itself is of full of flaws. The pharmacy profession has not been given equal priority as that of engineering or medicine. Most of the students who have been getting admitted over the past few years into the pharma courses do not belong to the top merit category. Rather they are the left offs who could not get a seat in medicine or engineering courses.
Right from the beginning , the students from their 10th and intermediate levels are so groomed by the parents and teachers thinking that engineering and medicine are the only courses that will offer them lucrative careers. Pharmacy, biology, and chemistry courses are given least priority and this has created a wrong notion among the students that these courses are meant only for the less meritorious students. Moreover the admission processes are also full of flaws and designed in the same way giving priority to one course for the top rankers and least priority course for the lower order merit students. For instance the Eamcet (engineering, agriculture and medical common entrance test) admission test held in Andhra Pradesh is a comprehensive admission test, qualifying in which enables the students to get eligible for the counselling of engineering, medicine and pharmacy admission in the state.
Education department holds counselling for engineering and medicine first and later on after two or three months it takes up the pharmacy counselling. This means the top rankers take up the engineering or medicine courses and the leftover or low merit students will have to take up the low priority pharmacy course. If this is the situation, after few years the entire pharmacy system will have only the second grade, lower talent group. To avoid this, the entire education system should be restructured and equal priority should be give to all courses, be it engineering, medicine or pharmacy.
Apart from this, the infrastructure facilities, laboratory facilities and teaching faculty are also other major concerns that are impacting pharmacy education in the country. Many colleges are running just theoretical classes in the pharmacy curriculum. Though there are more than 300 pharmacy colleges in Andhra Pradesh more than 50 per cent of them do not have updated laboratories. The students just conduct some dummy experiments gaining no experience of the real course they are intended to learn. In fact in many colleges labs are just for name sake and teachers give them practice marks just based on their behaviour.
The teaching faculty is another big concern for the pharmacy education. Many colleges do not have adequate teaching faculty. Students just go to the colleges to pass time in the class rooms. Though some colleges shows full faculty on the papers, in reality the students are taught by dummy and unqualified people who are working on behalf of some other who have kept their certificates with the colleges. For instance in a Pharmacy college in Uttar Pradesh all the faculty names which were shown on the register were working in foreign countries or in some pharmacy industries but in real the students were taught by unqualified faculty. The inefficient monitoring mechanism and corrupt inspection mechanism by the pharmacy council of Indian is the main reason for the deteriorating standards of pharmacy education in the country.
Adding to the already existing problems, recently the row between the Pharmacy council of India and the All India council of technical education have created doubts in the minds of people as to who is actually monitoring the pharmacy education and its standards in the country. The PCI showed its dissent at the AICTE for granting excessive seats to pharmacy colleges without actually contacting them. This shows that there is no body in the country which is seriously concerned about the quality of pharmacy education. The existing ones are just fighting for their upper hand to just delegate power and authority shunning their true responsibility of monitoring and inspecting the colleges.
So, one can easily attribute all these problems as some of the major reasons that are leading to the downfall of quality of pharmacy education in the country. The pharmacy education has miserably failed to pool in the best talents in to its fold. Because of this , not many students are interested to take up research and development.
Coming to the curriculum and the syllabus, the students are taught the age old subjects. There is hardly any upgradation with regard to pharmacy curriculum in the state level or central level colleges. Except for the premier colleges like NIPER or IITs many private and government owned colleges are callously following the un-updated syllabus. “Seminars, presentations and other real time laboratory and industry orientation programmes are seldom taken up by the pharmacy colleges. This has lead to a large gap between the industry and the academia. Today the industry is reluctant to take freshers as they have no enough subject knowledge or communication skills to get absorbed by the industry . Moreover the industry is facing funds crunch and lacking time to train them or groom them. Realizing this we have initiated a biotechnology industrial orientation programme in collaboration with NIPER, USP and IIBT,” said Dr. Srinivas Rao, MD, IIBT.
“There is no doubt that we have the best talent pool and well established institutions churning out top cream individuals in the chemistry, biotechnology and pharmacy segments in the country, but the we need to continuously upgrade our self to meet the international standards and the growing demand for talent pool,” said Dr. P.V. Appaji, DG, Pharmexcil.
In the recent times as there have been many private colleges mushrooming up in a short span of time. Due to this there may be some lapses here and there but eventually every thing will be set right once a transparent and robust cross checking mechanism is developed to check quality of education, opined a source from the Andhra Pradesh Pharmcy Council.
Challenges
To overcome the growing challenges in pharma education, it is time for the policy- makers to revamp the entire system right from admissions, infrastructure, curriculum, faculty and training. Pharma education needs to focus more on the concept of innovate ecosystems and quality management. Application of total quality management to the educational system improves the present situation.
The counselling system which serves to be the gateway of the students for entry into the profession should be brought under the scanner. Introducing specializations at the graduation level will result in professional expertise and excellence. Education is a customer- focused industry and every student should be capable of evaluating themselves for continuously improving their quality and professionalism.
Teacher - focused mastery learning should give away to student - focused learning. An educational institution should provide the student with a stress-free atmosphere for learning and developing his intellectual capabilities. Every college should have a counselling centre to address the problems of students in their academic and personal life. An emphasis on the concept of quality teacher should included. Revival of the pharmacy education in India is the need of the hour which in turn will pave the way for the upgradation of the pharmacy profession in the country.
Flaws of the present system
The major flaws that are referred as the main cause of degradation of pharmacy education in India includes, entry of unqualified and non-meritorious students into the course, Non focused and unspecialised way of learning, out dated curriculum and educational regulations, lack of industrial and clinical exposure, unskilled ways of practical and lab training in the institutes and research output from Indian educational labs rarely lead to commercialization and revenue generation.
Another major flaw in our education system is that as against the market needs for trained man power, teaching takes total priority over research in the universities. So the institutional base of research in India should be made wider and all institutions should give focus to serious research and not just limit it to few 'elite' institutes.
Counselling system
The present counselling system proves to be the first and foremost reason for the degradation of the profession in the country. The system creates a situation in which anyone who has money can get a seat in B. Pharm without the basic qualifications. The system has to be scrutinized and some regulations have to be made which assures that the meritorious students are entering into the profession. A centralized allotment procedure (CAP) is to be introduced to regulate the entry of students into the pharmacy stream, which is purely based on the merit all throughout the country.
While describing the challenges faced by pharmacy education in India, Jessi Shaji, pharma education analysts, in her article compared the current status of pharmaceutical education in India and USA. Despite having lapses she said that the profession of pharmacy has made significant progress in the last decade.
To confront the new challenges , she suggests that there is a necessity to revamp the pharma education mainly related to regulatory bodies, industry–institute interaction, different teaching technologies along with collaboration with foreign pharmacy institutes and distance education. By overcoming these problems , we should give a commitment for upgrading the education through modernizing pharmaceutical culture.
“It is high time we need to strike a balance between patient and industry oriented courses and bring out effective and rewarding curriculum for our graduate course of pharmacy. The proposed AICTE syllabus for B. Pharm framed after in depth deliberations is a step in the right direction,” opines Jessi Shaji.
Quality of education
In any sector , quality is what matters. The quality of pharmacy education imparted by an institution will have everlasting impact on quality of health care offered to the society. So any lapse in the upgrading the current pharmacy curriculum will definitely lead to problems in the future.
It is the responsibility of the present generation and the academicians to prepare the students to meet challenges and professional requirements in higher education.
Keeping in view, current status of pharmacy education in developed and many developing countries, it is ripe time for us to initiate a national debate on introduction of graduation in pharmacy as the minimum qualification for registration as pharmacist.
As the world of today is undergoing rapid social economic, political and technological advancement, it is high time that the policy- makers of the nation devise suitable standards in the pharmacy education and earmark minimum qualification for registration of pharmacists. In fact pharmacy education should satisfy the needs of today and tomorrow for continuous professional development.
Nourishing atmosphere
In order to improve the situation , every pharmacy college should provide the students an atmosphere to nourish his internal skills and qualities. A system should be devised so that each and every student gets an opportunity to freely think and develop his skills to the maximum. Professionalism can be cultivated only through rational ways of thinking and performing. Students should come out with their ideas and suggestions in any aspect of education and especially be focused on innovative research. Most of the students are lacking an initial pull, which should be given by the teachers or the college. Students should also be trained to improve their presentation skills and their personality.
Coming to the educational aspect, much emphasis should be given to industrial and practical exposure. Clinical and practical training should be given more importance and made a part of the curriculum. Research oriented way of learning is more effective rather than mugging up a lot of theory. The knowledge of a pharmacy student should be current and always be updated. He should be aware of what are the latest changes going in the field of pharmacy. A student should learn to evaluate himself and try to continuously improve his knowledge levels.
Historical perspective
In the year 1937, the first degree course in pharmacy was instituted at Banaras Hindu University by late Prof. M.L.Schroff under the patronage and support of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. Prior to that there was no formal training for the so-called compounders who did numerous jobs under the doctors and incidentally filled prescriptions also for their patients. For nearly a decade the course at BHU remained the only degree levels formal education in pharmacy. Later the Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat universities introduced full-fledged degree courses in the late 1940s.
After the Pharmacy Act came into existence a rapid expansion took place in the field of pharmacy with mushroomed growth of pharmacy colleges. The status of growth of pharmacy profession relied upon pharmacy education. Hence the curriculum should be revised constantly to keep pace with the emerging trends in pharmacy fields. But in India the pharmacy education is unable to produce skilled pharmacists because of problems in the educational system making the pharmacists jack-of-all-trades and master of none.
Currently the Indian pharmacy education has four tier system viz, Diploma in pharmacy (2 years post HSC), Bachelor in pharmacy (4 years post HSC), Master in pharmacy (2 years post B.pharm), PhD in pharmacy (minimum 2 years post M.pharm).
In the developed countries pharmacy education is not just knowledge based, it is competency and skilled based. In the developing countries, there is growing concern to transform pharmaceutical education into around twenty competencies. Some of the competencies are pharmaceutical care providers, communication counsellors, information providers etc. The competencies are not just knowledge based but also skill oriented.
Therefore it is high time even for Indian academicians and policy- makers to upgrade and bring changes in the diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate education from knowledge base to competency base, in order to develop the necessary skills and competencies and not theoretical knowledge of pharmacist.
Upgradation of pharmacy education
In order to stand up to the global standards, a comprehensive and focused revamp is necessary in India. To face the global challenges the Indian government needs to establish a Pharmacy University to have better control on the pharmaceutical education. In addition to the government, both at the state and central levels should make a network of innovators and a network of users to constantly keep track of the changes.
To ensure quality of education, the pharmacy teachers should be encouraged to attend international conferences and visits abroad. Education institution should follow the practice of exchange of experts from foreign countries to have better scientific and fruitful interaction.
In addition to the above more investments in pharmaceutical education and research, will also enable efficiency and faster growth. Efforts must be taken to persuade industry to collaborate with colleges and share efforts. Authorities should also ensure libraries and laboratories kept open to researchers for 24 hours.
Organizing seminars, refresher programmes, workshop and training programmes continuously in collaboration with industries and establishing technology transfer offices in each institute to teach and practice patenting, IPR etc will definitely help quality of pharmacy education and improve and update the knowledge to face global challenges.