Cultivating of Service-oriented Pharmaceutical Professionals

LIU Yu-cheng, SUN Li-hua

(School of Business Administration, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China)

Cultivating of Service-oriented Pharmaceutical Professionals

LIU Yu-cheng, SUN Li-hua

(School of Business Administration, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China)

Objective To expound the meaning of cultivating service-oriented pharmaceutical professionals and to discuss how to achieve the goal. Methods Current status of pharmacy service was analyzed and solutions to the problems of low pharmacy service level in China were put forward. Results and Conclusion Pharmacy service will be in great demand in society and service-oriented pharmaceutical professional cultivation will become a new trend. Therefore, it is suggested service-oriented pharmaceutical professionals should be cultivated from the aspects of subject construction, specialty construction and course construction, etc.

service-oriented; pharmaceutical professional; cultivation

To study the cultivation of service-oriented pharmaceutical talents, firstly, we must make clear what pharmacy service is. Pharmacy service is the responsible provision of drug therapy for achieving definite outcomes that improve a patient's quality of life. Pharmacy service involves the process through which a pharmacist cooperates with a patient and other professionals in designing, implementing, and monitoring a therapeutic plan that will produce specific therapeutic outcomes for the patient. Pharmaceutical care involves the process through which a pharmacist cooperates with a patient and other professionals in designing, implementing, and monitoring a therapeutic plan that will produce specific outcomes for the patient. This in turn involves three major functions: identifying potential and actual drug-related problems; resolving actual drug-related problems; and preventing drug-related problems. At present, pharmacy service in China is far from satisfactory. Studies have shown that most of the hospital pharmacies in China have been clinging to the traditional, closed and passive service modes, which involve the simple preparation making, formula dispensing and drug provision. The pharmacists in hospital pharmacies don’t have adequate communication with doctors or patients and will not participate in pharmacy service actively. In drug stores, there is a severe shortage of licensed pharmacists, therefore, the pharmacists’ posts and functions are not clearly determined or fulfilled, and their work is not recognized by either drug stores managers or the patients. The overall quality of the pharmacy service providers, i.e. pharmacists, is not good. As is shown in a survey on the licensed pharmacists, 71.9% of the people surveyed are quite familiar with the usage of the common OTC drugs; 67.4% of the people think they are able to accurately perceive the intention of the prescribers and dispend the formula as required; 50.5% of the people believe that they know about the incompatibility of the common drugs and the drug interactions very well and 47.2% of the people believe that they know about the therapy cycles of the common antibacterial. All the data indicate that the work of the pharmacists surveyed remains at the primary stages of examining formula and dispensing formula, i.e. they lack the capability required for providing pharmaceutical care, and it is hard for them to provide good pharmacy service.

There are various reasons for the inefficient pharmacy services, such as the late beginning and incomplete pharmaceutical policies etc. And of course there is one factor that cannot be ignored, that is, the shortage of serviceoriented pharmaceutical talents. Higher pharmaceutical education should be responsible for such a situation. For some historic reasons, higher pharmaceutical education has been attaching more importance to the development of new drugs, quality identification, new preparations and production techniques etc, and thus neglecting the knowledge on clinical pharmacy needed for guiding the patients on drug use. Such bias in higher pharmaceutical education has had great negative influence on pharmacy services in China. This paper will discuss how to cultivate qualified service-oriented pharmaceutical talents.

1 To construct the discipline of clinical pharmacy

Discipline generally refers to a branch of science that is comparatively independent in the whole system of science with comparatively complete theory. It mainly includes three elements: various branches constituting the academic system of science; the special knowledge generated in a particular field of research; the specialized personnel and facilities for the scientific research. Without the systematic knowledge on the discipline and experts as the core faculty, it is impossible to cultivate talents.

However, the present situation in China is that both medical universities and pharmaceutical universities are faced with the problems concerning discipline while cultivating service-oriented pharmaceutical talents. We lack not only the complete special knowledge in the field of pharmacy services but also the professionals specializing in the research on pharmacy services. In medical universities, the discipline of pharmacy is relatively weak, while in pharmaceutical universities, the disciplines of basic medicine and clinical medicine are relatively weak. Under such circumstances, the construction of the discipline of clinical pharmacy must be strengthened to cultivate professional expert at both medicine and pharmacy. In the initial stage of discipline construction, merging medical universities and pharmaceutical universities is an effective solution.

2 To conduct the accreditation of clinical pharmacy degree course

By 2009, eleven medical and pharmaceutical universities in China had offered the experimental major of clinical pharmacy. Great efforts must be made on the accreditation of clinical pharmacy course to ensure that the major can cultivate qualified service-oriented pharmaceutical talents. There are two reasons for this: firstly, accreditation of the course is the basis for the system of certified registered qualification. The certified registered qualification is the access control system taken by the government for the professional technicians with great responsibility, social versatility and influence on public interests. In the developed countries, such as in Europe and America, all those who want to apply for the qualification of registered professionals shall be educated in the colleges or universities with accreditation of courses and obtain the corresponding degrees to ensure that the future professionals get systematic and standard specialized and professional training before entering the professional fields, and these professional fields include the field of medical and pharmacy services.

Besides, people from other fields must be involved in the process of accreditation, and usually industry experts will be hired as the accreditation experts. The involvement of people from other fields in the accreditation of courses can give prompt feedback to the universities about the requirements of the society for talent cultivation, the requirement of the license qualification for the graduates’abilities, the situation of the graduates’ employment as well as other kinds of information so that the universities can keep abreast of the requirements of the development for the professionals.

Therefore, the accreditation of clinical pharmacy degree course can ensure to a great extent that the talents cultivated can meet the needs of the employers.

3 To set the levels of talent cultivation rationally

Pharmacy services can be divided into various levels, such as hospital’s pharmacy services, pharmacy services in drug stores and community clinics pharmacy services etc. In order to cater for the pharmacy services at different levels, the cultivation of talents should be in accordance with the needs of the society.

Postgraduate level: Talents at this level are mainly employed in the Grade A Tertiary Hospitals to provide services due to their better education and higher level. The postgraduates should have abundant knowledge on clinical drug use, understand the process of diagnosis and treatment, be good at communicating and collaborating with doctors and bridge the gap between doctors and patients. They should know very well about the nature and functions of drugs, be able to examine the formula and guide rational drug use, participate in the decision of drug therapies and be capable of independent thinking, judgment and problem solving; they should conduct research on clinical drug use and evaluation; they should participate in ward-round and group consultation; they should know about the state of the illness as well as the treatment plan, enquiry the patient’s drug use history and monitor the patient’s drug use. Since doctors in the Grade A Tertiary Hospitals usually enjoy higher degrees, it is necessary that the service-oriented pharmaceutical talents with higher degrees work with them.

Undergraduate level: They should master the professional knowledge on clinical pharmacology (pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics) and the drug interactions etc; they should be able to provide the patients with consultation on drug use, and answer questions on the indications of drugs, the contraindications of drugs, adverse drug reactions, cautions, drug interactions and interactions between drugs and food as well as knowledge on the usageand dosage, the specifications of preparations and the period of validity and the storage of drugs etc.

Junior college student level: They mainly work on the traditional dispensing and provision of drugs and should be able to use the advanced monitoring devices and conduct monitoring on particular patients such as therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), blood concentration monitoring, drug adverse reaction monitoring; and they should carry out the task of drug use records with the management software and collect the pharmaceutical statistics.

4 Construction of curriculum system

A rational curriculum system is the premise and basis for the quality of talent cultivation and the structure of knowledge is more malleable than the structure of specialties. The present structures of pharmaceutical education, whether it is the mode of “chemistry + pharmacy”or the mode of “chemistry + biology + pharmacy”, all aim at cultivating development-oriented and productionoriented pharmaceutical talents. However, such structures of knowledge are unlikely to cultivate qualified serviceoriented pharmaceutical talents and they must be changed.

Firstly, the traditional curriculum should be improved to be more clinical-oriented by reducing the developmentoriented and production-oriented knowledge, such as knowledge on chemical synthesis, molecular structural modification, preparation technology, quality control and so on; and more emphasis should be placed on the nature of drugs, mechanisms of action, pharmacological activities and structure-activity relationship etc, and to enhance courses closely related to clinical drug use, such as clinical pharmacology and biopharmaceutics etc.; Secondly, medical courses should be added to the curriculum by providing relevant courses on basic medicine and clinical medicine so as to ensure that the students can acquire enough medical knowledge to communicate and interact with clinicians and correctly understand the causes, the pathogenesis and the therapies of diseases; besides, relevant courses on sociology should be added to the curriculum, such as pharmacoeconomics, pharmacy administration, medical and pharmaceutical ethics, patient psychology, interpersonal relationship and communication skills etc., which will facilitate pharmacy services.

The reform in the structure of knowledge also includes experiment courses. The part of experiment on pharmacy in experiment courses should be changed from being more drug-development-oriented to being clinicalpharmacy-oriented, and meanwhile the clinical practice should be enhanced. In the aspect of cultivating the ability of practice, students should be given more chances to participate in clinical pharmacy services at medical institutions, community clinics and drug stores so as to establish the education mode of combining school teaching with hospital teaching and enterprise teaching so that the students can broaden their knowledge and improve their abilities during the process and obtain more confidence and techniques for pharmacy services. The focus should be on the link of practice at hospitals by arranging some teachers to be in chage of clinical practice, which include designing and implementing plans for the clinical practice and coordinating work between schools and hospitals etc. Besides, the clinicians and clinical pharmacists will coinstruct the students for clinical practice.

If we reshape the structure of knowledge in accordance with the ideas mentioned above, we can establish a new mode of talent cultivation, i.e. a mode of“chemistry + biology + medicine + pharmacy + social science” to ensure that we can have qualified serviceoriented pharmaceutical talents.

To sum up, with the development of the society and economy, there will be greater demands for pharmacy services, and the cultivation of serviceoriented pharmaceutical talents will be a new trend for the development of pharmacy education. Higher education itself should believe that opportunity favors only the prepared mind and get ready to cultivate qualified talents to meed the needs of the society.

[1]CHEN Zhi-dong. Present Problems of Pharmaceutical Care in Hospitals [J]. Chinese Journal of Primary Medicine and Pharmacy, 2012, 19 (21): 3338.

[2] ZHAO Miao, XIE Min. Reflection on Situation of Pharmaceutical Care in China [J]. Journal of Military Surgeon in Southwest China, 2008, 10 (5): 129.

[3]YANG Shu-jie, CHEN Jing, WANG Shu-ling. Improve Management of Licensed Pharmacists in Drug Stores in China [J]. Qilu Pharmaceutical Affairs, 2008, 127 (112): 707.

[4]YE Kui-ying, YANG Shi-min. Sampling Survey on Licensed Pharmacist Examination in China [J]. China Pharmacy, 2007, 18 (10): 799.

[5] LI Zhu-ji, Sha Shu-qing. Reflection on Establishing Accreditation of Degree Course in Chinese Higher Education [J]. China Higher Education, 2007, 9: 38.

[6] XU Xiao-yuan, WU Xiao-ming. Study on Accreditation of Pharmacy Degree Course in Australia and New Zealand Pharmaceutical Education [J]. Higher Pharmaceutical Education, 2009, 25 (2): 55.

Author’s information: SUN Li-hua, Professor. Major research area: Benefits and management of investment in the field of pharmaceutical industry, pharmacoeconomics, management of technical innovation. Tel: 024-23986553, Email: slh-3632@163.com