A majority of pharmacy institutes offering Pharm D course has not yet adopted best practices of training and teaching taking its toll on students' efficiency in rendering their services as community pharmacists and clinical pharmacists in hospitals, clinical trials, pharmacovigilance centres at hospitals and pharma companies.

There are around 229 pharmacy colleges offering Pharm D courses in the country. Of them, Telangana has 75 colleges followed by 57 colleges in Andhra Pradesh, 40 colleges in Karnataka, 22 colleges in Tamil Nadu, 15 colleges in Kerala and 20 colleges in other states. Around 800 Pharm D students pass out of these colleges annually.

Barring few colleges like Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Science, JSS College of Pharmacy, 70 per cent of colleges offering Pharm D courses have not yet adopted best practices in pharmacy education, said Hemanth Kumar Nambari, assistant professor, Sri Venkateshwara College of Pharmacy, Hyderabad.

The subjects in Pharm D course including pharmacotherapeutics, clinical research, bio-statistics, pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics, Toxicology and Pharmacology provide candidates with expertise on the use, effectiveness, and possible side effects of drugs. On completion of the course, they can work as hospital pharmacist or community pharmacist. They can also work in pharma industry and clinical trials etc.

The pharmacy institutes need to put in place a pharmacy and therapeutic committee in hospital, drug information and patient counselling centre to improve students' patient counselling skills. It will further improve rational use of drug and individualization of drug therapy, he said.

Currently there is a low focus on pharmacovigilance in pharmacy colleges.  Pharmacists involved in drug distribution need to be educated about adverse drug reaction reporting to improve drug safety. Pharmacy institutes should create pharmacovigilance unit in hospitals and train students in using specific software for ADR reporting. It will enhance ADR reporting by pharmacists, said Prof Nambari.

Pharmacists can work as clinical research associate playing an important role in monitoring and overseeing clinical trials conducted on healthy human volunteers. Clinical research exposure, if provided during course of study, will be of tremendous help to students planning to work as clinical research associate. For this, the institutes need to come out with clinical research programmes to be conducted along with pharma industry experts, he concluded.