Survey finds pharmacy education in UK handicapped by science status
Pharmacy education in the UK suffers in comparison with other UK health care disciplines and with pharmacy education in comparable countries overseas because it is treated as a science degree rather than a clinical qualification, a research project commissioned by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has found.
The project, “Health care professional education and training:
how does UK pharmacy compare?”, was carried out by David Wright
and Martin Loftus from the school of chemical sciences and pharmacy at
the University of East Anglia.
Presenting the results of their work to a meeting of the Council’s
Education Committee on 22 November, Dr Wright and Dr Loftus explained
that the project had compared pharmacy education in the UK with medicine,
dentistry and optometry in the UK, and with pharmacy education in Australia,
New Zealand, the US and Canada. One of their main conclusions was that
UK pharmacy education, being classed as a science degree rather than
a science/clinical degree, is funded at a far lower level than its health
care equivalents in the UK.
They also found that pharmacy education overseas treats the professional
aspects of pharmacy as a central element of the degree course — partly
because pharmacy is seen as a clinical profession rather than a science
discipline.
Another finding was that other health care educators in the UK and pharmacy
educators in comparable countries use more placements to allow students
to experience real-life situations. They also use more competence-based
assessments than in UK pharmacy education, where traditional methods
like examinations are used more.
The committee heard that the Society’s Academic
Pharmacy Group was to devote its next seminar to the research project. The seminar is
on 12 January 2007 at the Society’s London headquarters and anyone
wishing to attend should contact Florita Sanz (e-mail florita.sanz@rpsgb.org).
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