Current Pharmacy Curriculum in India and Need for an Update

Abstract

ABSTRACT-With 21st Century, the pharmaceutical industry is constantly bringing in new challenges upfront day by day. There is constant need of knowledgeable and competent workforce in different streams of pharmaceutical industry having soft skills and positive energy. In India, to meet the current Pharma industry demands, adequate restructuring of pharmacy academia is required to match current updates of research and innovation from the industry. New courses such as Pharmacovigilance, Medical Writing, Drug Regulatory Affairs, Pharmaceutical Marketing and Pharmaceutical Manufacturing should be introduced as a part of curriculum to match Research and Regulatory needs and should not limit to professional trainings. In developed countries, such courses are already in place. Pharmacists with such additional skill-sets are in great demand in India as well as overseas. So, the time has arrived for institutions in India to strategize and implement change in pharmacy curriculum in order to meet global needs.

A mixed-methods analysis of a collaborative online international pharmacy course

“…Comparison of the healthcare systems in the two countries ultimately became a particularly interesting part of the course. Greater innovation (More & Patel, 2019) and more diverse content (Pol et al, 2017;Sahu et al, 2016) have also been proposed as needs in pharmacy education in India, and thus, general exposure to USC teaching methods and content was of interest to Nirma faculty. Interestingly, as an unintended consequence, the course design created interactions within USC that had not previously occurred, including better integration of regulatory, clinical, and basic sciences.…”