PRACTICING HOSPITAL PHARMACISTS MENTORING PHARMACY STUDENTS IN CLINICAL PHARMACY: AN EXPERIENCE FROM DOW UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES (DUHS) PAKISTAN

Abstract

Pharmacy education has been an important and integral part of the education system of a country. Pharmacy education in Pakistan has grown significantly through the ages and there are quite a few number of pharmacy schools providing education to the students. The academia and practice had always been disjointed in the country. Dow College of Pharmacy (DCOP) at DUHS was established in the year 2008, with the vision to provide exemplary pharmacy education to the students and bridging the gap between education and practice. The intervention was made by the college through appointing practicing faculty members, working at Dow University Hospital as clinical pharmacists and teaching clinical pharmacy to the students at DCOP. Since no other pharmacy school in the country had jointly appointed faculty of pharmacy, this intervention provided opportunity to DCOP to produce quality clinical pharmacists for the country.

Under the supervision of clinical pharmacist pharmacy students were regularly rotated to hospital and were trained to take medication history, review patient profiles, gather & interpret laboratory data, and identifying potential drug related problems. Students were required to present their findings and interventions in patient profile as case studies to clinical pharmacists and interactive discussions were carried out by the mentors to enhance their clinical skills. The experiment of mentoring pharmacy students through practicing clinical pharmacist proved to be an efficient tool to develop and strengthen clinical skills of pharmacy graduates and could serve as a role model for other pharmacy schools in the country.