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Promoting pharmacy as a career

The fact that schools of pharmacy are having to lower entrance requirements because of a fall in applicants to study pharmacy (see news story) is worrying not only because of the potential drop in standards of future pharmacy graduates but also because it raises the question: why has the profession failed to attract school-leavers? Reports in the national press this week indicate that places for medicine and veterinary science are still fiercely contested, so why is this not the case for pharmacy? After all, a pharmacy degree is the key to a professional and varied career with almost guaranteed employment.

What pharmacy needs is a strong public campaign to promote the profession and encourage students of a preferred quality to choose pharmacy as a career. This could include representatives attending careers fairs, something the Royal Pharmaceutical Society used to do until the Council decided a few years ago that it cost too much. But what price can be put on attracting high quality students to the profession?

Work experience placements in pharmacies should also be encouraged. The proportion of students who choose pharmacy as a career after work experience is spectacular, according to Dr Peter Elliot, admissions tutor at Liverpool John Moores University. Careers officers at local branches could play a role in finding such work placements and promoting them to schools. In order to do this, the Society needs to provide careers officers with an effective level of support. This should be taken into consideration as part of the Council’s consultative review of how the Society’s local networks can contribute to the future of the profession.

The drop in applicants to study pharmacy is also bad news for the two new schools of pharmacy planned by universities in East Anglia and Kent. If the current number of pharmacy places exceeds demand, how will additional places be filled? And are the places needed?

The answer is probably yes. The current shortage of pharmacists is not going to be resolved without training more pharmacists. The shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers appears in the news almost daily, yet even the fact that some pharmacies are being forced to close because of the lack of pharmacists is not enough to get pharmacy’s recruitment crisis mentioned by either the press or the Government.

In order to get students on to pharmacy courses, we need to promote pharmacy as a career to the public.

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