From "A Pharmacy Graduate"
SIR,—I have been reading the letters in The Pharmaceutical Journals of October, November and December 1999, about the restrictions on the number of attempts to pass the registration examination. Being a victim of this unfair rule, I wish to add more facts, in a hope to get support from the pharmacist community towards my effort to get justice from the Society.
I am a British university pharmacy graduate, and on passing my degree, I completed one year of preregistration training. But unfortunately in all three attempts, I was not able to pass the registration examination. I have some valid points to make about this.
With the introduction of the registration examination the Society did not provide any extra help to the preregistration trainees to enable them to pass the examination. The only item supplied was the syllabus covered by the examination. The tutors, however, were helpful to their trainees, but after the introduction of the examination, no extra training or courses were available or suggested for the tutors, who have no experience of the examination themselves. (They were not required to sit it.)
The graduates who complete their preregistration year in a hospital or in chain pharmacies like Boots, Lloyds or Moss are very likely to receive training packages, quarterly tests, lectures, and a mock examination. The chain pharmacies structure their training courses, and provide course material in preparation for the examination.
Those who complete their year in a community pharmacy do not get such help. The Society should consider the tremendous difference between the facilities of training in hospital, chain pharmacies and local community pharmacy.
The unfair and unjustified rules for the pharmacy graduates can be highlighted more through the example of qualified pharmacists who are found guilty of professional misconduct. They can be removed from the register but are allowed to have the opportunity to return to the fold after a certain period of disbarment. In contrast, pharmacy graduates who are unable to pass the registration examination in their third attempt are dismissed from the profession altogether.
If I am good enough to pass the examination, it should not matter how many times I have attempted it in the past.
A pharmacy graduate who spends three to four years of full-time studies in a university and completes his or her year of training but fails the registration examination, has no other career to fall back on. As a pharmacy graduate it is difficult to obtain another job, as it becomes difficult to change horses in midstream.
A Pharmacy Graduate
297/17