ENTREPRENERSHIP SCENARIO AFTER PHARMACY EDUCATION_An Essay by M. Karthika

INTRODUCTION:

DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS IN PHARMACY STUDENTS

Entrepreneurship as a scholarly field was defined as seeking to understand how opportunities to bring into existence future goods and services are discovered, created, and exploited, by whom, and with what consequences. In the modern economic climate, entrepreneurship, or possessing entrepreneurial spirit, is critical for driving innovation and creating a prosperous society. Its concepts have been embraced by the wider public in recent years, where budding entrepreneurs pitch their business plans to well-known business people in the hope of securing investment.

In the context of pharmacy, entrepreneurship is generally associated with the establishment of community pharmacy and business management. However, entrepreneurship and its associated skills are key to the development of a range of health services in community and hospital sectors.In the United Kingdom, examples of such enterprises include: repeat dispensing, medication management, pharmacists prescribing medication, and minor ailment service. In the United States, pharmacies also embrace such services to improve patient adherence to medication. For example, medication therapy management programs allow pharmacists to counsel patients on drugs, while interactive voice recognition tools remind patients to order or pick up prescriptions.

Innovation is a key component of the pharmaceutical industry and biomedical research. Every drug or medicinal product developed and released to the market stems from an intellectual curiosity that requires a proof of concept spanning years. Pharmacists and health care professionals have a responsibility for the health and well-being of the population, the so-called “social capital.”Therefore, pharmacists may be defined as “social entrepreneurs” rather than the standard “business entrepreneur,” for whom financial profit is key to successful enterprise.

A Viewpoint by Brazeau in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education outlined the importance of nurturing entrepreneurial spirit in pharmacy undergraduates in order to advance future health care. She asked whether accreditation standards were too specific to promote intellectual curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit.

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), responsible for the accreditation of the master of pharmacy (MPharm) degree programs in the United Kingdom, states students should be able to demonstrate skills relating to research and development activities to improve health outcomes. Similar key skills are required in the PharmD program in the United States, and schools should possess “a vision for education, research, and other scholarly activities that commits faculty and students to fostering innovation through basic and applied research.”

Center for the Advancement of Pharmacy Education’s (CAPE) Educational Outcomes outlines that, as part of personal and professional development, students should “engage in innovative activities by using creative thinking to envision better ways of accomplishing professional goals.” Meetings, books, and continuing education courses provide opportunities for qualified pharmacists to learn about business and project management-related topics. The growing interest in raising entrepreneurial awareness in pharmacy students is ongoing.

Innovative community and hospital pharmacy services and pharmaceutical science are covered in detail throughout Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) School of Pharmacy’s MPharm degree via a range of teaching and assessment methods such as lectures, objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs), role-playing, workshops, poster presentations, a final-year research project, and community and hospital placements. However, until 2013, information relating to business management and intellectual property were essentially only covered in lecture-based teaching (passive learning) within the fourth-year Business, Government and Industry aspect of the course. Moreover, in the strictest sense, entrepreneurship has not been addressed within the degree program at QUB, yet entrepreneurial skills are vital for the development of undergraduate pharmacy students.

The pharmacy degree requires a solid educational foundation to promote critical and lateral thinking, problem solving (including study skills and team-working skills), leadership skills, effective communication, and the analysis and use of numerical data. For the benefit of student learning, a deeper appreciation of what is required to be an effective entrepreneur is needed. The best entrepreneurs not only were successful in starting their own business, product, and/or service but were also fully prepared with regard to its forward management. Entrepreneurs have an outward vision in order to recognize fully the opportunity that confronts them and look forward in order to plan its growth and future prospects.

From an education perspective, entrepreneurial skills form a dual, interactive process, where students develop an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their ideas, and of themselves, in relation to the wider environment. Thus, because of a deficit in the curriculum, we developed an interactive workshop on the subject, involving fourth-year students. It was scheduled during the last year of the degree pathway because these students have a greater understanding than earlier-year students of all aspects of pharmacy and, therefore, would presumably find it more meaningful. Furthermore, in addition to nurturing entrepreneurial skills, the GPhC stipulates that pharmacy students must be able to work effectively in a team, to develop other team members through coaching and feedback, and to identify learning needs of team members.The topic of entrepreneurship, as well as a workshop format, lent themselves to teamwork.

The hypothesis of this study was that entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills could be effectively promoted and enhanced through a workshop-based exercise. This workshop would allow the creation and development of a pharmacy-related product or service that would finally be presented as an oral sales pitch. Reports of such sales pitches are limited in the context of pharmacy-based education but are a mainstay of business, marketing, and economic practice. They form part of a series of pedagogical activities including class projects, service projects to enhance learning, role-playing, retention, and application of concepts and principles to the real world. In business education, students experience higher levels of learning and engagement when passive learning, such as lectures, are supplemented with experiential proactive learning techniques, such as the development of products and services and presenting/pitching them to an audience, and they result in stronger connections between education and real world scenarios.

 The overall learning objective was that, upon completion of the workshop, the pharmacy students would gain an understanding of entrepreneurial issues in the context of community, hospital, and industrial pharmacy. Students would also develop a range of entrepreneurial-related skills relating to problem solving, communication, teamwork, lateral thinking, research, and recognizing opportunity.

In addition to the workshop, a lecture was deemed necessary to introduce students to the area of entrepreneurship in pharmacy, provide guidelines as to what was expected in the workshop, and present a fully formulated case study using the same template provided to the students . Students were advised that this level of detail would be required for their sales pitch in the workshop. The lecture-based teaching alone not fulfill student learning needs because lectures limit opportunities for active involvement of students that task-centered, problem-solving teaching methods provide. Lectures also reduce potential for active “show how” knowledge and limit the ability to provide feedback on student efforts.^,

Template for Formulating an Entrepreneurial Product*

The lecture and workshop were supplemented by an entrepreneurial information booklet prepared by the authors, which outlined the following: the definition of entrepreneurship and its context in the MPharm pathway; intended learning outcomes and the format and structure of the workshops ;preworkshop preparation required and the resources needed; format of assessment and feedback; definitions of business terminology and guidance for the generation and development of an entrepreneurial idea.

Establishing Opportunities for Entrepreneurship in Pharmacy

 Entrepreneurs are usually viewed as individuals who take substantial risks to go out and start new companies, but most pharmacists go to work for entities that are already established, such as a community pharmacy or hospital. Such positions are generally considered safe, as they promise a steady paycheck and continued employment. For that reason, entrepreneurship is not commonly listed among a pharmacist’s skill sets.All human beings were self-employed at the start of human history, but that entrepreneurship was suppressed as civilized societies were formed.

          In today’s career landscape, the stability once offered by employers is no longer there. While there are many factors influencing the potential for unemployment, the advance of technology and the use of low-paid employees like pharmacy technicians are the biggest threats to the current pharmacy field. Assuredly, their implementation will shake up the traditional employment needs and model of pharmacy practice.

If we are concerned that these elements are a threat to your career ambitions, then we should ensure we have the skills to prepare for the changing delivery model of health care. As Hoffman and Casnocha write in their book, “If  we want to seize the new opportunities and meet the challenges of today’s fractured career landscape, we need to think and act like you’re running a start-up. The conditions in which entrepreneurs start and grow companies are the conditions we all now live in when fashioning a career.”

        

The  pharmacists should view themselves as entrepreneurs throughout their career development. To do so, the following 3 recommendations should be incorporated

1. Be paranoid. All great leaders fear that they are one day away from losing their edge or business. Technologies that can impact your standing are being developed and people who can do our job cheaper or better are being trained, so what we can offer our employer or customer might not be needed in the future. This scenario should generate fear that drives us to keep changing and learning new things. Staying paranoid will keep your knowledge, skills, and abilities sharp and competitive, as well as prepare you for whatever the future has in store.
2. Remember that all decisions have risk. Some people say they do not want to become entrepreneurs because making the decision to join a start-up is risky, but they fail to realize that there is also risk in maintaining their current lifestyle and position. All of us are one decision away from not being needed or from getting replaced with someone better or cheaper. Thus, there is risk in staying in a current position, just as there is risk in taking a new one.
3. Find mentors. Each of us should have a network of individuals with whom we can discuss new opportunities. Engaging with those who have different backgrounds and experiences, in addition to those who are doing what we want to do, is important for achieving success.

Pharmacists need to view themselves as entrepreneurs and examine their individual careers as start-up companies. Those who do so will be prepared to succeed in the future delivery model of health care and achieve professional satisfaction.

Entrepreneurship development in pharmacy - need of the hour

           The Pharmacy colleges in the country are providers of knowledge and training in pharmaceutical operations to the students but the colleges should create a mechanism by which the fullest potential and zeal of the students is exploited. Entrepreneurship promotes to do something new, develops the ability to take risks and helps in creating a new system of things. There is tremendous change in the economic scenario of the country. Students should look forward towards creating their own enterprise. Hence entrepreneurship promotes a vision for the future and it is the need of the hour. This article deals with the scope and developmental avenues of entrepreneurship in pharmacy academics in the country.

Pharmacy education in India has shown phenomenal growth after independence. There has been 200 fold increase in the pharmacy colleges offering Diploma and Degree Programmes since 1947. The progress was possible due to private colleges initiative. A large number of pharmacy colleges have come up across the country offering sufficient number of seats in D. Pharm and B. Pharm. for increasing aspirations of the students and parents. This success in growth was due to the combined and collective efforts of AICTE, state governments, private entrepreneurs and     many others. 

Due to surplus availability of pharma manpower, it will be beneficial and appropriate if young pharmacy graduates seek out to exploit their full potential by starting their own ventures and thus becoming job generators rather than job seekers. Moreover the salaries being paid to pharmacy graduates is also not attractive and are not on par with other vocations. Hence this necessitates the pharmacy colleges in the country to take necessary steps to promote entrepreneurial learning programmes in the pharmacy curriculum so that the pharmacy graduate coming out from the colleges can become self reliant and inspire students towards self employment in their early career. Hence the pharmacy colleges should keep their attention on developing a syllabi which not only produces trained manpower for pharmaceutical industry but also produces self reliant entrepreneurial pharmacy graduates which accelerates the process of economic development and growth of the country. 

Pharmacy entrepreneurship – immediate need

A pharma technocrat through pharma entrepreneurship can bring a radical change that can meet the challenges of emerging changes due to liberalization and globalization. Fast changing pharma industrial scenario, growing obsolescence in pharmacy curriculum stresses the need for pharma entrepreneurship among the graduates. Pharmacy graduates have a strong bent of mind in science and are capable of maximizing their skills if given the right training. Entrepreneurship development among the pharmacy graduates will be an effective mechanism of renaissance in technology innovations and industrial development of a nation. 

Entrepreneurship development

                          The process of entrepreneurial development involves providing all the inputs and information to a person for enterprise building and sharpening his entrepreneurial skills. The necessary things to be taught are technical, financial, marketing and managerial skills, Entrepreneurial attitude and ability. The entrepreneurship development (ED) is an organized tool for industrial development and a panacea for unemployment. The objective of ED is to motivate a person for entrepreneurial career and to make him capable of perceiving and exploiting successfully the opportunities for enterprise. 

The small scale industry development organization established in India in 1964 looks and aims at entrepreneurship skill development, technology upgradation and other issues related to small industries through a chain of small industries service institutes located at different places of the country. The institutes which are involved in entrepreneurship development, research and training are: 

1. National Institutes

. National Institute of Small Industry Extension Training (NISIET)

. Entrepreneur Development Institute (EDI)

. National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD)

. Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE)

2. Supporting Institutions

. Nationalized Banks

. Co-operative Banks

. Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI)

. Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI)

. Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI)

. State Financial Corporation (SFC)

. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)

. Khadi and Village Industries Commission. 

3. The State (Regional Institutes)

. Technical Consultancy Organizations (TCOs)

. Commissioner of Industries

. District Industries Centres 

. Industries Corporations

. National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC)

. Non Governmental Organizations 

Entrepreneurship development cell
            Every pharmacy college should launch an entrepreneurship development cell with a view to encourage students to consider self employment as a career option, provide training in entrepreneurship through modular courses and to teach the relevance of management. This cell will introduce the concept of entrepreneurship in curricula of pharmacy. It also facilitates self employment and entrepreneurship development through formal and non-formal programmes.

A faculty development programme can be conducted by the cell to develop professionals in entrepreneurship development so that they can act as resource persons in guiding and motivating the students to take up entrepreneurship as their career. This faculty development programme will provide a platform from which programmes, formal and informal can be conducted to support skill development activities particularly catering to specific areas of requirement, to identify and provide solutions for the problems of small business management and entrepreneurs, to provide training and retraining of entrepreneurs through variety of programmes and to train trainers, counsellors and motivators involved in the development of pharmaceutical entrepreneurship.

Conclusion
The need of the hour is to encourage more entrepreneurship in pharmaceutical sector so that the drugs and pharmaceuticals can be produced at affordable prices. Entrepreneurship has more scope for innovative ideas, problem solving attitude and creativity.