The pharmacy education in the country is a total disconnect between learning, training, and healthcare needs of the society. The profession of pharmacists goes well beyond mere drug dispensing to participate at all levels of the public health system. A roadmap needs to be chalked out to ensure a transformation in the profession of the pharmacist to shun the old and unproductive mindset and overhaul education, training and research approaches. There is need to harmonize pharmaceutical education with global standards where it is a recognised, critical and indispensable clinical profession. Unlike doctors, dentists and nurses, pharmacists are not considered as service cadre. General perception is that they are medicine traders. Moreover, the pharmacists are not seen in any uniform or white aprons either at chemist outlets or in hospitals. The faculty at pharmacy colleges do not interact with doctors. Pharmacists are not part of the decision making process to select the right medicines or in committees working on costing of drugs purchase. The current curricula is broadly industry oriented and has not changed in 80 years including the diploma course which was revised during the Education Regulation of 1991.They are still struggling for the recognition of their role that can help improve the health care system. Changes are required in quality pharmaceutical education meets the challenges and needs of the nation in the 21st century. The country failed to gain societal recognition of the pharmacy profession. The need of the hour is to ensure that quality of education is not sacrificed at the cost of quantity. Changes in the legislative framework that improve and maintain the high standards of the pharmacy profession in both educational and practice settings are lacking.
The profession of pharmacy is at a significant crossroads between its conventional drug-dispensing identity and a pioneering clinical role with health care provider status. Though a growing clinical pharmacy education system has been established in India, the developing pace is very slow. The main barriers facing clinical pharmacy education in India exist in the undergraduate educational system. First, the curriculum structure and content in clinical pharmacy programs needs to be improved to make it more practical and systematic.For example, courses are too elaborate and lack coherence and integrity from course to course and do not truly help students obtain practical clinical skills. Students lack sufficient opportunity to consolidate their theoretical knowledge in the earlier stages and find it difficult to adjust when they enter practice. There are still no well-designed assessment criteria for clinical pharmacy practice and little effective supervision when students are practicing in hospitals or other institutions. The more urgent need for pharmacy graduates is appropriate knowledge and skills in patient care. The demand for clinically trained pharmacists is therefore urgent. Cooperation between pharmacy colleges and hospitals must be strengthened, more faculty members with a clinical pharmacy background must be recruited, and hospital pharmacists must be involved in teaching college courses.
Federal legislation for pharmacy provider status is not a want, but a need for the reimbursement of patient care services that will not only demonstrate the importance of our profession but also provide financial benefits. With the snowballing demand for health care services by the increasing population and shortage of physicians, something will have to change. Pharmacists could be that defining factor for many companies and patients; however, we need to make our services and value known. Pharmacist provider status is just 1 piece of the colossal health care delivery system change puzzle. How will pharmacy practice evolve to meet the needs of the 21st-century health care system? That is up to us, and if we don’t take measures to define it in our terms, somebody may define it for us. The first step is the passage of federal provider status legislation.
