Pharmacy schools will need to increase PhD places
PhD study: graduates need persuading to accept modest income in
academia |
Schools of pharmacy will need to train an additional 333 PhD students
by 2015 to produce the number of academic pharmacists that will be required
to meet the needs of pharmacists’ expanding roles as well as increasing
undergraduate numbers, according to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
In response (PDF 40K) to a request from the Department for Innovation,
Universities and Skills for contributions to its science and innovation
strategy,
the Society says that an extra 133 academic pharmacists will be needed
by 2015.
“Assuming an 80 per cent completion rate over four years
and a 50 per cent conversion rate to academic posts, the schools will
need to train an extra 333 PhD students,” it adds.
The Society believes that other science disciplines are in a similar
position. It suggests that, to address this situation, there is a need
to make an academic career more attractive and to be creative in providing
funding opportunities for PhD students.
Steve Chapman, head of the school of pharmacy at Keele University, told
The Journal that both new and established schools of pharmacy are finding
they are recruiting from an increasingly small pool of academic pharmacists.
“While PhDs are not necessarily a requisite for the practice and teaching
elements, research-based scientists and practitioners are the life blood
of a vibrant school and in turn stimulate the profession as a whole to
progress,” he said.
Professor Chapman added that, while funding to increase the cohort of
PhD students would be enormously helpful, it still leaves the challenge
of persuading graduates who can earn large salaries immediately postregistration
to accept a much more modest income to undertake research.
“One
can only hope that the stimulation and satisfaction of continuing to
challenge and seek to improve on existing science and practice from an
evidence they have contributed to, will be sufficient to attract talented
individuals into an academic career,” he said.
Other suggestions made by the Society include encouraging experienced
practitioners into universities, providing funding for innovation, ensuring
university research is adequately supported and improving the transfer
of research between universities and industry.
On the provision of funding for innovation, the Society proposes that
a possible way forward is to ring-fence funding so as to offer a large
number of small grants, sufficient to obtain baseline evidence, to allow
innovative research projects to apply for larger research funds. It highlights
that a similar, small-scale initiative funded by the Pharmacy Practice
Research Trust has proved to be successful in education.
Research funding Concerns
are raised by the Society in its response (PDF 40K) to
the Higher Education Funding
Council for England’s research excellence framework proposals,
which are due to replace the research assessment exercise (RAE)
as a way of assessing and funding research within universities.
According
to the chairman of the Society’s Education Committee,
Graham Phillips, the Society fought for a unified pharmacy assessment
as part of the RAE, which included science and practice, several
years
ago.
The new proposals view pharmacy as a science subject with no mention of clinical
practice, he says. And, in addition, the subject is split into two units, a move
that does not appear to be logical, says Mr Phillips. The Society is also concerned
that a proposal to use citation rates to assess research is overly mechanistic
and it would rather see pharmacy academics reviewing their peers’ work. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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