The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) will soon come out with a new education regulation 2011 to update the syllabus of Diploma in Pharmacy (D Pharm) which is to be implemented from next academic year. The Council has completed the preparation of the syllabus and will now submit the same for clearance from the ministry of health and family welfare by the month end.  

The last regulation was implemented in 1991. Going by the changes in the pharma sector, we need to upgrade the education standards of D Pharm as the industry is looking for candidates from this specialization,  PCI president Dr B Suresh told Pharmabiz.

Although PCI has mandated the need for B Pharm as the basic qualification for entry into the industry, there is considerable demand for diploma holders not just by the pharmacy trade but by the industry too.  The current pharmacy education regulation is almost two-decades-old and the practises are out-dated.   This called for a need to revise the existing  pharmacy’s education standards  with the  inclusion  of the latest industrial and hospital  pharmacy practices, he added.

In order to address the challenges of international quality by 2020, there is an urgent need to restructure the pharmacy education and scope of pharmacist and reengineer pharmacy education.  This is where the revised pharmacy new regulation 2011 will give a fillip to the standard of syllabus and course curricula, said Dr. Suresh.

In this regard, PCI is looking into devising  a  competency framework to ensure a quality assurance system, and building academic and institution capacity, among others, he informed.

“Pharmacy educational systems and pharmacy institutions which are  designed for a by-gone age have to realize the need to reshaping into learning organizations, where conversations on how actionable change is brought about in a global perspective, that benefits the learner and teacher, customer and expert, have become more important,” said Dr. Suresh.

India has experienced an expansion of its pharmacy educational centres but an uneven distribution has left poorer states with proportionally fewer colleges and the quality of the education is variable. Presently pharmacy education in the area of D Pharm has 660 colleges with an effort to increase to 72 additional colleges taking the student strength from the current 39,147 to an additional 4,280 taking the total number of candidates to 43,427.  In B Pharm, there are 837  colleges with an additional 423 coming in which would take the total from 36,238 to 61,573 candidates.   There is considerable  interest evinced by the industry to hire D Pharm and B Pharm candidates.

As clinical services provided by pharmacists are fairly new to India, which has traditionally been industry-focused in its pharmacy degree programmes, there is also a shortage of clinical pharmacy trainers. There are approximately 50 pharmacists per 100,000 people at present, with a large urban-rural disparity.

Therefore we need to expand the D Pharm candidates who are currently manning pharmacy stores. Moreover, keeping in sync with the Pharmacy New Education Regulation 2011, we need to fit in community pharmacy not just for drug dispensing but also with focus on community and industrial pharmacy.  The curriculum will move from patient-centric to science-centric  touching up need for drug safety.  In fact, the 2011 regulations will arm the D Pharm candidate with confidence of authority to create an indispensable  role in the healthcare space, said Dr Suresh who is also chairman, scientific body, Indian Pharmacopoeia and Vice Chancellor, JSS University, Mysore.