With a view to strengthen the role of the pharmacists in the state and to mould them into becoming best in the field of community pharmacy, the Gujarat State Pharmacy Council (GSPC) has initiated a unique step towards launching continuous education programme for pharmacists across Gujarat.

It is understood that the GSPC plans to launch this programme in a phased manner starting first with the council’s head office in Ahmadabad and later adopting it across the state, based on the outcome of the pilot project. Through this unique venture, the state council plans to train and equip the pharmacists for a greater role that will ensure better patient satisfaction and efficient healthcare services to the patients.

Interestingly, they have already identified the course syllabus based on the recent trends and requirements to enable and strengthen the pharmacists in the state with the best knowledge bank available. In fact, they have already completed the process of appointing a special pharmacovigilance team of three members for the same along with an IT expert to deal with the technical aspects relating to this project. GSPC informed that they plan to roll out this project first in a phased manner with a batch of 30 to 40 pharmacists later on expanding its scope gradually based on the demand by decentralizing the whole project and adopting it across state.

According to Pradip Trivedi, president, Gujarat State Pharmacy Council (GSPC), it will be finalizing the process and prospect of how to roll out this project across the state by mid-September. He informed that if things go as planned they will be launching this project latest by March next year. “Our main aim is to ensure full-fledged implementation of this programme throughout Gujarat, which has been developed and designed to specifically train the pharmacist to be an expert in their profession at par with international standards. Most importantly, we strongly believe that such a programme will help in boosting their confidence level and ensuring better patient-pharmacists relation in the future which is considered as a building block of community pharmacy.”

The course is believed to focus on the feasibility of the profession, issues and ways to tackle them effectively, case studies to learn, etc. The council informed that it is in the process of identifying more areas to include and expand the scope of community pharmacy in this course so as to enable pharmacists to communicate more effectively with the patients.