How does one get rid of dual masters? This is the million-dollar question, which has brought sleepless nights to many managements of private pharmacy collages in India. The dual masters are, the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) and the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).

The reason for the question or demand can be listed as follows:
1) The enormous pressure brought on college managements to satisfy the rules and regulations of both these organisations, from starting of the college to, day to day running, maintenance etc.

2) The consequent capital requirement in the form of infrastructure, endowment deposit etc.

3) The voluminous paperwork and preparatory works to be carried out during periodical inspections by these two authorities apart from other agents like universities (sometimes such inspection exceeds 3 or 4 in an academic year!).

4) No such dual masters are there for other private colleges in disciplines like engineering, medical, dental, physiotherapy or nursing. (Much management run these colleges also, along with pharmacy colleges. Only in pharmacy colleges they face such a dual master situation).

5) Above all, the very important reason, according to teachers working in these pharmacy colleges is, the insistence of minimum scale of pay for teachers prescribed by AICTE. No such prescription is there by PCI, hence, the management's choice among the dual masters is PCI, and in essence they want to get rid of AICTE, not PCI.

The situation and remedy

Before prescribing a remedy, diagnosis and etiology should be completed. Why, in the first place, such a situation arose?

The reason or etiology is very simple, that pharmacy courses are not well defined. It is a heterogeneous mixture of clinical and industrial subjects. Since clinical subjects are there PCI comes into the picture and AICTE came in because of industrial orientation of pharmacy syllabus.

Whose mistake is this for such a mixture? We cannot blame any body for this situation. Pharmacy as a nascent science developed like this in the last century. During 1940s and 50s, hospitals and industries were established in large numbers in India. Consequently, pharmacists and pharmaceutical chemists were required in huge numbers. Hence pharmacy education was developed in such a way to satisfy the requirement of industry and hospital. Short-term compounder and or D Pharm course to satisfy the needs of hospital and medical shops and B Pharm course for the industry were started. This is proved by the fact that in the last few decades D Pharm holders are not employed by the industry and B Pharm holders are not in many numbers in hospitals or medical shops.

Because of this reality it is but natural B Pharm degree should be controlled by AICTE only as it prepares manpower for the industry and has many technical subjects. But now the situation has changed. Both the industry and hospital sector have developed enormously. They need competent persons with strong foundation in their subjects. For example, clinical pharmacy services in hospitals need pharmacists who can advice doctors on selection of drugs, counsel patients, perform therapeutic drug monitoring etc. Similarly, industries need chemists who can operate, maintain and supervise sophisticated machineries used in production and analysis introduced in the last few decades.

The Solution

From the above it is crystal clear that separation and improvement of clinical and industrial subjects in the pharmacy syllabus is a compulsion of the time. But it is yet to be completed, that is why there is such a situation and a lot of infighting among government authorities.

Present B-Pharm syllabus can be divided into 2 major courses like B-Pharm (Clinical) and B-Pharm (Industrial) as it has been already decided to abolish D-Pharm course.

New B-Pharm courses can have the following subjects.

B Pharm (Clinical)

I year
1. Anatomy
2. Physiology
3. Health education
4. Statistics
5. Advanced Chemistry
II year
6. Pharmacy practice.
7. Physical pharmacy
8. Biochemistry
9. Microbiology
10. Hospital and drug store management
III year
11. Clinical pharmacy
12. Pharmacology
13. Clinical pathology
14. Chemistry of synthetic drugs.
15. Pharmacognosy and alternative systems of medicine.
IV year
16. Advanced pharmacology
17. Advanced pharmacognosy.
18. Chemistry of natural products
19. Pharmaceutical analysis.
20. Forensic pharmacy
One year compulsory Clinical training after 4th year

B Pharm (Industrial)
I year
1. Advanced pharmaceutical organic chemistry. (APOC)
2. AP physical chemistry.
3. AP inorganic chemistry.
4. Statistics.
5. Basics of anatomy and physiology
II year
6. Physical pharmacy.
7. Industrial business management.
8. Industrial microbiology.
9. Pharmaceutical engineering I.
10. Preparative pharmacy.
III year
11. Pharmacology.
12. Pharmacognosy.
13. Pharmaceutical engineering II.
14. Chemistry of synthetic drugs.
15. Forensic pharmacy.
IV year
16. Formulative and industrial pharmacy.
17. Biotechnology.
18. Herbal drugs technology.
19. Instrumental analysis.
20. Chemistry of natural products.
One year compulsory Industrial training

Salient features of the above scheme are
1. Just 5 papers per year, so that the students and teachers can devote more time for each subject, resulting in in-depth study.
2. Separation of industrial and clinical subjects, hence some sort of specialization during under graduation itself.
3. Such a syllabus will increase the confidence and competitive skills of pharmacy graduates among health care team and technocrats.

If two B-Pharm courses are created as above, needless to say clinical course can be controlled by PCI and industrial course by AICTE. Private college managements can opt for any one of the courses. If any college wants to run both the courses they should accept both masters, there is no other go. Existing D Pharm colleges who are in the verge of closure can adopt B Pharm (Clinical) and continue to serve the profession.

Those who are really interested in the welfare for pharmacy profession should make a sincere introspection of present situation without bias and arrive at a bold decision. It is the need of the hour; if we fail in this duty the future generation will curse us, for not taking the profession forward.

-- The author is President, Indian Pharmacy Graduate Association, Madurai