Need of skill development in pharmaceutical curriculum; Indian Pharma industry: Changing Dynamics_An Essay by Rahil Kazi

Remembering the things and writing down them on a paper within three hours proves one’s ability, understanding and skills – this is the current scenario of pharmacy curriculum in India. This way of judging student’s ability has limited their thinking process. They focus on getting marks rather than gaining knowledge. They don’t use their brain to question the existing things so the doubts are never cleared and hence their basic concepts are not thorough. Since the concepts are not clear the students can’t discover new things in pharma industry.All these things happens because they are in the race of getting marks and not in the phase of learning about things that would enhance their skills.

The curriculum is composed to produce professional pharmacist who have the knowledge, ability and skill. But the implemented curriculum says another story. This semester based has very limited time. During this short duration of time the institutes focus mainly on completing the syllabus and thus the thinking process is looked over without seeing it.

We do produce a large number of qualified pharmacist every year but among them the percentage of trained and skilled professionals is very low. The reason behind this low percentage is that our curriculum is irrelevant when it comes to practical application. The syllabus we study is not regularly updated and the students are yet unaware of the new technologies used in this industry. How can expect a pharmacy student to be a skilled when he doesn’t know about the recent technologies and trends of the pharma industry. In the scenario, the students are like those race horses which are tied with blinders to prevent them from seeing sideways. For the students the curriculum works like the blinder which does not let the students see beyond the textbooks.

Our current curriculum lacks at the academic – industry interaction. The only interaction academics have with the pharmaceutical industries are the very few (just one or two) pharma industry field which the institute organize. Students cannot learn enough in that limited time. Curriculum focus more on theoretical knowledge, as a result there is a huge gap between pharmacy education and practice. Under the current pharmacy education situation medical practitioners are better fitted for pharmacist jobs than pharmacist themselves.

While comparing our pharmacy education with the western countries, we find that their education is patient oriented while ours is industry oriented. The patient oriented pharmacy education widens the scope of understanding. The students understands the patients’ mindset, the diseased conditions, disorders or any other health issues more clearly. They can then use this knowledge to develop new pharmaceutical products, or find alternative for the existing one or improvise the existing ones to have better therapeutic action. Industry oriented education focuses mainly ion the processes which are used to formulate pharmaceutical products. The knowledge about these processes is important for sure but equally but equally important is the knowledge about the scope and spectrum of diseases. The west takes into consideration the importance basic verbal and non- verbal communication skills. They have introduced self- medication in their education for the better development of pharmacist. In the self-medication, the students interact with the teachers and talk to them about the medication they would chose for themselves to treat their exsistinghealth issues and they would also specify the reasons for choosing a particular medication. The teacher could point out the mistakes and can enhance students’ development. The students donot literally give medicines to themselves but this practice of self -medication helps them to understand patients’ view point as well as it boost their confidence. They conduct various workshops to keep students updated about new trends and technologies in pharma industry.

To a certain extent the credit for the poor condition of pharmacy education goes to the dual education governing bodies – Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). PCI regulates the clinical subjects while AICTE regulates the industrial orientation of pharmacy syllabus. Pharmacy education suffers because of the conflict between these two bodies. PCI and AICTE do not wish to work together as they both wanted to have their individual dominance over the pharmacy education. The authorities of both PCI and AICTE should leave this dominance issue aside and fully focus on the pharmacy education so that the nation can have qualified as well as skilled pharmacist.

Another challenge that the pharmacy education face in our country is the availability of qualified and competent teachers. A teacher shapes a student’s thinking process. If a teacher is not competent than this would cause hindrance in the student’s development. The teacher of the pharmacy institute should have thorough knowledge about their respective subjects and they should also have verbal communication skills to deliver that knowledge to their students. They should keep the students about the recent trends of pharma industry. They should implement the concept of “we would learn” (teacher and student interact with each other and question each other) than “I will teach you”. The first concept would be more fun learning experience for the students. The availability of teachers is low so certain institutes ask teachers to teach subjects other than the subjects they had mastered. This is not a good practice many a times as the teacher is unable to deliver the knowledge to the required extent. This makes student’s learning experience bitter and hence they lose their interest in that particular subject.

All the above mentioned drawbacks of the pharmacy education does emphasize on the need of skill development in pharmaceutical curriculum. In today’s world the pharma industry is facing cutthroat competition and for their survival in such situation they need brainy and skilled pharmacist. Only skilled pharmacist can take the pharma industries to great heights. So the need of the hour is the curriculum which emphasize on skill development of the students.