time management and pharmacy students

The next managerial skill that is important for pharmacy students is of course, the time management. As we know, time is so precious and its use is an important issue in understanding human behaviour. Time is something that you need in order to do your work, accomplish your goals, spend time with your loved ones, and enjoy everything that life has to offer. Time is a unique resource because you get the same amount as everyone else. Once it's gone, it's gone forever and you can never get it back. One thing that you can do with your time is change the way you use it.

Benjamin Franklin said, "Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff that life is made of."

The question concerns how time is allocated across a number of activities (such as time spent at home, at work, college, etc.). Here comes the importance of time management. Time management is the organization of tasks or events by first estimating how much time a task will take to be completed, when it must be completed, and then adjusting events that would interfere with its completion so that completion is reached in the appropriate amount of time.

The pharmacy student who enters the health care sector in future has to deal with the ‘time’ in careful manner. Time management skills are important to academic success. They include activities performed by pharmacy students such as planning in advance, prioritizing work, test preparation, and following schedules. Higher academic performance may be achieved by balancing time management and study techniques effectively. Students should find time to gather latest information regarding the pharmaceutical field and other related topics at the same time.

Pharmacy profession is such a field where time management has a mammoth importance. Everyone working in the pharmaceutical industry is aware or should be aware of the cost of time. If you are working in a pharmaceutical company, you may have heard of this expression: ‘time to market’. This is the length of time it takes to get a drug from discovery to the market place. We know that a tough competition is existing between the pharmaceutical companies to capture the market. So, the time by which a drug reaches the market should be reduced as much as possible. It is exclusively the responsibility of the pharmacist who works in different departments like R&D, production, regulatory affairs, marketing etc.

Another expression that is sometimes used in companies is ‘shift to the right’. This term refers to a deadline which is slipping. Imagine you have planned to start a clinical trial in January and for some reason or another, it is delayed for 6 - 12 months. There might have been a hold-up with the protocol, regulatory approvals might be delayed or there was a problem with the manufacture of clinical trial supplies. Then your deadline has slipped to the right. Unless you can make up the time, delays like this will be very costly for a pharmaceutical company. Why? Because it means that sales will not be generated until the license is granted and if there's a delay, money is lost. With patents due to expire, this is bad news for a pharmaceutical company. Completion of the tasks within the time limit is very significant as pharma companies are concerned. A community pharmacist who is related directly with the patients, doctors and nurses also needs a good time management skill. Hospital pharmacist should take care of the thing that whether medicines which are crucial for the patients are coming to the pharmacy at the right time. There lies the managing power of the pharmacist!

So, it became compulsory that pharmacy students should practice the management of time as in future they have to enter into fields from patient caring to drug discovery and marketing. These students should get proper training to learn the management of time. They must aware of the different mind tools for the development of time management. In UK some universities are providing special training programmes to pharmacy students. Such initiations should be promoted and encouraged so that students the future pharmacists should have the time management ability and other managerial skills.

To be continued…..

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