The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7172 643-649
3 November 2001

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Letters to the Editor

Careers

Help young people opt for pharmacy

From Dr A. D'Emanuele, MRPharmS, and Dr R. A. Elliott, MRPharmS

The profession is suffering from a recruitment crisis (PJ, 14 July, p45). The situation is likely to deteriorate with a significant decline in applications for a pharmacy degree. Applications to study pharmacy at United Kingdom universities have fallen by 12.9 per cent (PJ, 9 June, p770). We are presently involved in an initiative exploring how we can attract students to pharmacy, and we naturally turned to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's website to see what career information is available. We were disappointed at the poor quality and quantity of information available.

If we were sixth-formers using the web to explore various career options we would not have been inspired by what was on offer. Careers information is hidden within the "Education" section of the website and is a bland collection of text and pdf files. If you click on "Careers in pharmacy", you are taken to a book review page on the Pharmaceutical Press website, from which you cannot directly return to the Society's website. There is also a link to PJ Online for students. However, we feel that recruitment is important enough to merit a dedicated and professionally designed site within the Society's website.

Can we encourage Lambeth to consider investing some time and effort in developing this section of the website? Prospective pharmacists will be using the internet to obtain career information and we should not waste this opportunity. Are we trying to filter out only the most determined of students?

Tony D'Emanuele
Glossop, Derbyshire

Rachel Elliott
Chorley, Lancashire

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