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Tomorrow's Pharmacist October 2000 p5
Edited by Pamela Mason

Leading article

New Tomorrow

By Pamela Mason - editor

Welcome to the second edition of Tomorrow's Pharmacist. Whatever stage on the road to qualification as a pharmacist you are, this guide is for you. With this being the first year that pharmacy students are completing a fourth year, few of you reading this will be doing your preregistration training. You still have that to come as well as deciding where best to do it. As this year's president of the British Pharmaceutical Students Association, Noel Wicks says from his own preregistration experience, “it's not so much where you do it, but what you make of it, and you've got to discipline yourself from the word go to get the best out of it.” Good advice and well worth remembering when your turn comes.

No doubt you have already given some thought to your future career, but do you know what it means to be a pharmacist in the 21st century? Do you have any real idea of what you might be doing over the next five or ten years? Counting tablets, counselling patients, providing information on medicines, working as a clinical pharmacist in a hospital, giving prescribing advice to doctors? You could be doing any or all of these, but at the start of your professional career, it is important to have vision. One article sets out a vision for the profession for the next decade and highlights the provision of pharmaceutical care as the way ahead. Despite the myriad of different activities that pharmacists can be involved it is crucial to be clear what we are about. First and foremost this means taking care of patients and their drug related needs. Are you ready to provide pharmaceutical care? Or at least ready to learn how to deliver it?

If you feel that the present is enough to cope with, with its constant stream of deadlines, exams and money worries, help is at hand from articles that explain how to structure your written assignments and how to give a polished presentation. All of this is crucial not only for the time you are a student, but during the rest of your professional life. And for some practical advice on how to minimise your debts, turn to our article on student finance.

Following on from last year, this year's issue again has quite an international flavour. An exciting new venture — the Neema project — supported by the BPSA and the International Pharmaceutical Students' Federation, has involved building a new dispensary in a Tanzanian village and the first group of pharmacy students will go out to work there in 2001. So, watch this space. Another article looks at the role of pharmacists in the various non-government organisations that operate overseas and argues that our potential is not fully realised. And if you have ever wondered what it is like to study pharmacy in another country, read about the experience of a Dutch student.

We continue to be grateful for the help, feedback and input from BPSA and its members. And we would appreciate even more in future issues. This is a publication for you — tomorrow's pharmacists — and the more of you that contribute to it, the better it will be.

—Pamela Mason, editor.

Tomorrow's Pharmacist is an annual publication produced within the editorial department of The Pharmaceutical Journal