Dream to Foreign Land : A Glimpse on Present situation

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Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D) is the most sophisticated and professional doctoral degree in pharmacy and pharmacists ranks as the most trusted healthcare professionals in today's society. This clinical degree has a main objective of serving the healthcare system for better patient care through evidence based medicine. Pharmacists play a major role in health promotion and manages the resources of health care system in co-operation with the health care team and delivers the health and family welfare services in existing socio-economic, political and cultural environment.

It will be a dream for any pharmacy student to practice in highly developed countries like US, Canada, UK and Australia etc.; as they stands out in providing dignity and an handsome remuneration to the services offered. Pharmacy services are offered in diverse areas like Clinical pharmacy practice, Community pharmacy, Geriatric pharmacy, Governmental agencies, Home health care, Hospital pharmacy, Managed care, Pharmacoeconomics, Pharmacy education, Consulting, legal practice and drug information. Continuously, as the responsibility of the pharmacists is increasing this led to the new era of pharmacy profession, where the pharmacists are involved in rendering their services through various specializations like (only 20 are listed below out of 114)

1. Allergy and Immunology
2. Ambulatory medicine
3. Anaesthetics
4. Child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy
5. Critical care medicine
6. Emergency and family Medicine
7. Health informatics
8. Interventional cardiology
9. Nephrology
10. Nuclear medicine
11. Occupational health
12. Oncology
13. Pediatrics
14. Physical and rehabilitation medicine
15. Public Health
16. Preventive medicine
17. Palliative care
18. Pharmacoeconomics
19. Pharmacogenomics
20. Pharmacy education and Health promotion

However, getting through the registration process is a laborious which requires tremendous efforts, sound knowledge on academics, relevant skills and financial support. The registration process is different for different countries.

Short view of registration process for US:

In case of United States, once the candidate meets the eligibility criteria required by the NABP, he/she needs to select a state where he/she desires to a registered pharmacist; and an application is to be drafted for FPGEE, which has to be qualified for FPGEC certification program. After application of FPGEE and Educational Credential Evaluation (ECE) evaluation is done, the NABP board scrutinizes all the documents submitted earlier and makes a decision in writing regarding the status of application. Then the candidate has to apply for the visa, followed by examination.  It takes 2-3 months for the results and the internship of at least 1500 hours is required. This also requires a Test of Spoken English (TSE) depending on the state. Then the NABP in accordance with the state pharmacy board issues an authorization to take NAPLEX.

Below is the list of licensure examinations for different countries in a quick view.

List of Abbreviations

Glimpse at present situation: It is known from private sources that 67 Pharm.D students from India have registered for FPGEE examination in the United States till now, out of which very few of them got qualified and none of them cleared NAPLEX to become a registered pharmacist. This may be due to the Pharm.D educational standards in India as they do not meet the standards of foreign pharmacy education. It is evident that many Indian M.Pharmacy and Ph.D candidates had cleared NAPLEX earlier and now practicing in respective countries. But the Pharm.D status always remained exclaimed.

" Right now the US is producing enough number of pharmacists to meet their healthcare demands in hospitals and retail pharmacies. There is unemployment for American Pharm D holders in the states of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Job opportunities are not that good in other 45 states also. after undergoing all the laborious process mentioned above  then the candidate will receive the pharmacist license. Then, it is his turn to compete in the open market to get jobs. It is too difficult to get jobs in hospitals in the US because they prefer their own graduates who are properly trained for therapeutic drug monitoring. Not only from India, but also from other countries the pharmacists come to US in search of jobs and compete with the local graduates. There are very few clinical and hospital pharmacy jobs for Indian Pharm D graduates in the US hospitals in the next 20 years,” - Says an Intern from American Speciality  Pharmacy, Texas, USA.

Reference:http://www.jyoungpharm.org/article/718

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Regards,

Deepak Kumar Bandari,

Pharm.D Intern,

Vaagdevi College of Pharmacy - India

Elsevier Student Ambassador - South Asia