The Royal Pharmaceutical Society may be able to give accreditation to the master of pharmacy degree course at Liverpool John Moores university within three months.
The Society announced last week that it had withheld accreditation from the course starting in September because an accreditation exercise begun last autumn had failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion (PJ, August 12, p218).
But the prospects for accreditation look brighter following a meeting on August 15 between representatives of the Society and the university. In a statement issued afterwards, the head of the Society's education division (Dr Robert Dewdney) said: "Discussions at the meeting were positive and have set out a path that should enable accreditation of the degree by early November."
The university's representatives at the meeting were the vice-chancellor designate (Professor Michael Brown) and the dean of the division of sciences, education and health (Professor Peter Wheeler). The Society was represented by the Vice-President (Mr Marshall Davies), the chairman of the Education Committee (Mr Alan Nathan), the leader of the 2000-01 degree accreditation panel (Mrs Linda Stone), the chairman of the Heads of School of Pharmacy (Professor David Luscombe) and Dr Dewdney.
Should the Liverpool course fail to gain accreditation, students who enter the first year this autumn and graduate in four years' time might not be able to start preregistration training without undergoing additional examinations or assessments, for which the Society could charge. The Society's action does not affect students returning to the university for the second, third or fourth years of their course.