The validity, necessity and promotion of the pharmacy course, Pharm D is being questioned by a section of the Kerala branch of QPMPA, the national  level organisation of private medical practitioners.

The association plans to set out a national level agitation against the promotion of the course by arguing that the advancement of the course will reduce the medical importance of the doctors.

The move against the promotion of Pharm D was already kick-started in Kerala by one Dr Sushama Anil, doctor –cum-owner of a Kozhikode based hospital. The doctor is now engaged in the task of mobilizing doctors from other states to escalate the agitation into the level of a national struggle against Pharmacy Council of India.

Dr Sushama Anil, a member of QPMPA has written an article in the monthly journal of the association in which she says that if the Pharm D is recognized and established by the government, and appointed those graduates in the hospitals as intermediaries between doctors and patients, the doctors community will lose the entire control of the medicines. Making a remark on the Pharm D graduates as ‘pharma doctors’, she says the total control of the drugs will be vested up on these ‘compounders’. According to her, the pharmacists, whether B Pharm, M Pharm or Pharm D, are mere compounders.

The article says that with the introduction of Pharm D, the Pharmacy Council of India is trying to bring back the extinct ‘medical practice compounders into force.' This move of the PCI will pave the way for a tussle between doctors and ‘pharma doctors’ (pharmacists) for power, position and importance in the health sector, the doctor maintains through the article. Her argument is that the doctors should be the backbone of the healthcare system, nobody should be allowed to try to be at par with the doctors.

According to her, the pharmacists (‘pharma doctors’) are vested with the roles of conducting patient’s medication history review, medication order review, patient counselling, adverse drug reaction monitoring, therapeutic drug monitoring, ward rounds and providing drug information to the drug information centre, these are nothing to do with the pharmacists, but are the duties of the doctors.  In such a situation, no medical representatives will approach the doctors and their knowledge about the new drugs cannot be updated. This will adversely affect in such a way that the doctors need only to diagnose or carry out the clinical procedures. “MBBS should be renamed as DBBS—Bachelor of Diagnosis and Bachelor of Surgery,” the doctor said.

Since there is the term ‘Doctor’ in the expansion of Pharm D, the person having the Pharm D qualification can use ‘Dr’ as prefix to his name. This is against the dignity of the doctors and the medical profession. Pharm D course is like the ‘old wine in new bottle’ as in olden days for want of doctors in rural areas, the compounders used to treat the patients, Dr Sushama wrote in the article.

While speaking to Pharmabiz at the QPMPA national seminar in Thiruvananthapuram, Dr Sushma Anil said a pharmacist or a compounder cannot become a doctor, then why should he put the term ‘Doctor’ as prefix to his name. The doctor prefers to call the Pharm D graduates as ‘compounders’ rather than calling them as pharmacists. To support her argument, she asks whether a conductor can do the job of a driver. She is of opinion that even the doctors are old in age, they update their knowledge, but the compounders are not. Further she said the doctors are service oriented, but the pharmacists are business oriented.

While arguing for the dignity of the doctors community, she said the Pharmacy Council of India has started the course on ego basis. “They (pharmacists) want to become above the doctors.”

Another allegation levelled against PCI, according to the article, is that the PCI’s intention is to phase out gradually the three year B Pharm course by giving opportunity for the ongoing Pharmacy graduates to attain Pharm D.

The article also exhorts the doctors’ community to organize and fight together against the launching of the 3.5 year Rural Medical Services (BRMS).