From Pharmacy to Pharmaceutical Sciences – The New Curriculum

Abstract

Looking at the statistics of Pharmacy graduates, the picture has changed considerably over the last 25 years. In the 1980s at least 80% of the diploma students chose an occupation in a community pharmacy. Today graduates are employed in hospitals, industry, government, and in public health positions beside the traditional community pharmacy that still accounts for about 50%. This reflects the strategy of the Institute to develop 'Pharmacy' into 'Pharmaceutical Sciences', which has been pursued by the nomination of several professors in fields beyond classical pharmacy in the 1990s, while keeping the classical pharmacy chairs strong. This trend is ongoing with a recent nomination of a chair in Pharmacogenomics. As a consequence, a new concept for the training of pharmacists has been designed resulting in the Curriculum in Pharmaceutical Sciences that began in the year 2000.