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Letters to the Editor
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Registration examination
What has happened to the preregistration year?
From Concerned Pharmacist
When I qualified as a pharmacist in 1976 I completed a preregistration
year under a specially trained tutor and was signed off at the end as
being a responsible person. The system worked well and as far as I know
there was no suggestion of incompetent or dangerous pharmacists being
admitted to the Register.
Nearly 30 years on I find that it has been replaced by an examination
with a pass mark of 70 per cent, equivalent in some universities to a
first class honours degree, which has just failed 29 per cent of the
applicants. This means that 50 jobs have fallen through, all of which
will have to be readvertised, while pharmacies have no pharmacists and
locum dates are vacant. What a shambles!
Of the people who failed, over 50 per cent were taking the examination
for the first time, including my son, who scored 68 per cent. He did
his preregistration year in the hospital sector and was sent on numerous
courses at a local university. He revised nearly as hard as he did for
his degree and took an entire week off just before the examination. He
got 85 per cent in the calculations and around 60 per cent in the other
topics but he still failed. He was devastated. His pharmacy job was cancelled.
He cannot take the examination again until June 2005. So after four years
at university, one year of preregistration training and a good report
by his tutors, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society deems him not good enough
to be put on its register. He is now actively considering jobs outside
pharmacy and who can blame him? Another pharmacist is lost to the profession.
Concerned Pharmacist
297/30
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