Oral pres. "The challenges in pharmacy education : the clash between “hard” and “soft” sciences”.

There is no discussion that there is an evolution, even a revolution going on, and still coming up, in the pharmacy profession. For many years, the pharmacist was responsible for the production and the analysis of medicines. Now, the pharmacist is also responsible for the information towards patients and the profession is now more than ever patient-centered than medicine-centered. This evolution had also structural influences on pharmacy education. Which new topics should be included in the curricula? Which new educational methods should be introduced? How to find competent teachers? Moreover, whereas pharmacy curricula were originally focused on "hard sciences", such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, more so-called "soft sciences" have to be introduced in the pharmacy programme. Examples of these soft sciences are communication (patient-related, but also communication with other health care workers), pharmaceutical care and social pharmacy. These changes in pharmacy education have an important influence on management issues in the Schools of Pharmacy. Most of the research in these so-called soft sciences is more difficult to finance (less publications, journals with lower impact factor, etc.). Also the clash between the traditional faculty (hard sciences) and the new faculty(soft sciences) is difficult to avoid. This is definitely a challenge for managers and Deans of Schools of Pharmacy in a global wide perspective.
Finally, we may not forget that the pharmacy programme should be above all an academic programme, this to distinguish pharmacy (and other sectorial professions) from the main stream of professional education.

Jaar van publicatie:2011

Trefwoorden:challenges in pharmacy education