Pharmacy graduates need more than ever to be able to implement scientific knowledge into practice and to appraise and provide professional services based upon best available evidence. Educational developments, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, need to meet the ever-increasing demands of the health service. Schools of pharmacy and the profession need to be fully integrated, and changes to the undergraduate programmes over recent years have attempted to achieve this. Like its predecessor, the MPharm programme is designed to provide an education for students in all aspects of pharmaceutical science and to encourage development of a professional attitude in the deployment of knowledge and skills. The programme contributes to the global requirement for providers of health care and innovators in pharmaceutical science, technology and treatments to individuals and society. While the four-year programme has allowed for some syllabus expansion, will this affect the quality of undergraduate and, subsequently, formal postgraduate education? Indeed, are postgraduate programmes ready to meet the demands of the new graduates?
During the past decade, there has been a rapid expansion in the numbers of pharmacists undertaking formal, postgraduate clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice programmes. These programmes are an important requirement for pharmacists to practise effectively and indeed are viewed as an advantage for career promotion. However, developments in undergraduate education, together with changing demands placed on practitioners, have clear implications for the range and level of postgraduate education provision in pharmacy. The changing needs of our profession may require an evolution of postgraduate purpose to maintain motivation for undertaking further formal postgraduate education. The need for a postgraduate master's degree may now be challenged when one can graduate with a master's as a first degree, while the postgraduate certificates and diplomas must be advanced enough so that they are not providing more of the same.
The proliferation of postgraduate programmes was initially prompted by specialisations in secondary care and the subsequent need for appropriate recognised training and development. These programmes additionally now react to intra-discipline specialisations, such as health care, academia and industry. More than ever we need professionals with the ability to apply the knowledge they attain in community practice to the hospital setting and vice versa. Health care professionals now need to be able to adapt to changing work settings, in line with evolving services and standard provision of quality care. They must be integrated workers, able to work with other health care team members. We must educate our graduates to be diverse, to be able to co-operate across boundaries, to use their unique skills in new ways, and to foster a positive attitude of mutual respect, inter- and intra-professionally.
The present government encourages a continued learning approach to professional practice by implementing clinical governance. The philosophy of postgraduate courses should move from learning for a life to lifelong learning, developing according to the demands of the new "consumers". We need to inspire our students with creative learning habits rather than overwhelm them with tasks and constant evaluations. To ensure that practice and education are intrinsically linked, schools of pharmacy need to undertake a seamless approach to professional education, in step with government policy and commitment to lifelong learning. We need to be radical in our approach, to equip the profession with practitioners able to compete in the medical world. We are seeing the emergence of pharmacy in primary care networks, which will link both the practising professionals to research and call for interfacial training and development of these skills. Just as the MPharm now seeks further to link science with professionalism in practice, we need postgraduate programmes that seek to do the same. Such developments include the degree of doctor in pharmacy, which offers experienced practitioners in the field of acute care, primary care or industry an opportunity to pursue doctoral level studies, tailored to meet the needs of their professional practice. This will complement the existing doctor of philosophy which, being totally research focused, may not necessarily be well suited to the needs of practitioners who plan a career in the professional or operational aspects of pharmacy.
Pharmacists seeking postgraduate qualifications want (and will demand) programmes that meet their expectations. These consumers want an education that is inspiring, useful and appropriate. The development of postgraduate programmes should strive to retain usefulness and validity within professional practice rather than continue to react to consumerist demands for career progression. To further ensure that practice and education are intrinsically linked, the development of academic practice and educational programmes should be underpinned with the values of governance in the same way that clinical governance will form the basis of professional development. Academic governance should be viewed as positive and developmental, a way of addressing concerns about the quality of courses while addressing how good practice can be recognised in one area and transferred to others. Successful postgraduate courses can then be judged as those in which service performance and academic quality are fully integrated at every level. In this way we can move formal education forward to meet the challenges of the future and take the responsibility for such advances. This will develop a purpose for learning in the profession, shifting the emphasis from attaining a qualification in order to progress a career, towards an accepted philosophy that values learning as useful.
The authors are from the centre for pharmacy practice at the School of Pharmacy, University of London