For the pharmacy students who have completed the diploma courses (D Pharm) and want to upgrade their qualification to degree course (B Pharm), the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) will start a bridge course from next academic year starting from June next year.

The PCI in its executive committee meeting recently has constituted a task force under Dr Dipankar Chakraborty to give final shape to the programme. The task force will deliberate on the rules and regulations to be put in force to conduct the course from June, 2010. It will be a two-year course and it will be offered to the candidates who are already in pharmacy services.

The condense course will be a blended mode of education and the students will have the freedom to choose either the regular contact programme or the distant education according to their convenience. The regular course will be conducted as evening course for the convenience of the pharmacists who are in service. Programmes like patient-counselling, hospital pharmacy management, community pharmacy management and drug information dispensation will get weightage in the curriculum, PCI chairman Dr B Suresh said.

Dr Dipankar Chakraborty also said that the syllabus for the bridge course will be entirely different from the conventional B Pharma course as the entire focus of the course will be on pharmaco-therapeutics. There will be no more chemistry, pharmaceuticals and such other subjects in the bridge course as the intention of the course is entirely different. While the bridge course is intended to upgrade the minimum qualification of the pharmacists from diploma to degree, the syllabus for the B Pharm course is framed for the purpose of further higher studies.

The bridge course will go a long way in upgrading the minimum qualification of the pharmacists who are in service from diploma to degree, especially at a time when there is an outcry to upgrade the minimum registrable qualification for a pharmacist in the country from diploma from degree on the lines of developed countries.