Necessity of PharmD in India

Introduction

Few days back, one of my friends had posted a blog imparting the news of a 'PharmD awareness programme' that was held at Manipal Institute of Pharmaceutical Science. Through this blog, I would like to express my ideas and views about the necessity of PharmD course and profession in India.

Drawbacks of B.Pharm profession

B.Pharm has been in a run since 1948 in India. Though, now it is a well recognized profession in our nation. However, the pharmacy profession has been quite unsuccessful in filling up the requirement of a 'high quality health'. This may be mainly due to the industrial orientation and a favour that has been given to the B.Pharm curriculum. The 'health care' aspect is totally lacking. Although, this issue was dealt with in one of my blogs, I would like to concentrate on this topic again, but in brief.

Most of the B.Pharm passed out graduates mainly enter either pharmaceutical industry or R & D. Although we are legal dealers of drugs and we have expertized information about drugs and their use, we can't apply our knowledge to health-care of patients, which requires few advanced training and skill.

Role of PharmD

The requirement of controlling the adverse drug reactions, patient compliance, therapeutic drug monitoring, Better drug dosage regimen etc. are few among many which need to be achieved. The emerging field of PharmD in India is the ultimate requirement necessary to achieve better patient compliance. It is mainly hospital oriented, as evident from the fact that it's a compulsion that the colleges offering the course must have an adjoined hospital. Patient councelling is another requirement that PharmD promises to provide.

Since, India is a multi-ethnic nation with wide genetic diversity, it's not necessary that a drug would achieve same action and activity with same efficacy as that achieved in some other individual. The reason lies on the concept of Individualization of Drug Therapy (IDT), which states that no two individuals could show same response to a same drug under similar diseased condition due to different personal profile and health factors. This hastens up the need of such a medical service that can overpower these drawbacks. Physicians are expertise mainly in diagnosing a disease and prescribing drugs. But for ensuring patient compliance and acceptability, the job of a pharmacist comes into play. A PharmD professional is trained in such a field.

Hence, personally I feel that there is a great necessity of a PharmD course in a country like India where itbs greatly required to achieve better drug control and compliance among patients, who are greatly unknown to drug knowledge and awareness about health. The combined patient treatment by a physician and Pharmacist is the ultimate and superior most way of achieving better patient compatibility.