COMMENT
BITTER PILL FOR TOMORROW’S PHARMACISTS
schools of pharmacy. Some have argued that demand can be stimulated to mitigate against this worst case scenario. Given that role extension for pharmacists has been a recurring feature of government policy for 30 years - with no clearly discernible impact on demand for pharmacists over those three decades - that seems improbable.
Dr Joseph Bush considers how the lack of control on pharmacy student numbers could prove detrimental to the profession.
So where does this leave schools of pharmacy? Well, plans are afoot to reform pharmacist education and training with proposals to turn the current ‘4+1’ model (four years of undergraduate education followed by one year’s, on-thejob, preregistration training) to an ‘integrated’ five-year undergraduate programme (with a six-month period of ‘on-the-job’ training at the end of the third year of study and a further six-month period of training in the final six months of the five-year programme). A side effect of such a move may well be that student numbers are effectively capped as the number of funded preregistration placements (i.e., placements for which an employer receives remuneration from the NHS) available will presumably be controlled by Health Education England (HEE, on behalf of the NHS). Given that these proposals have been in the public sphere since 2011, the sudden acceleration in impetus regarding the implementation of these proposals by both the pharmacy regulator and HEE appears more than fortuitous for those who wanted to see a numbers cap.
Pharmacy at Aston University can trace its roots all the way back to the opening of the Birmingham Municipal Technical School in 1895. There are only five English schools of pharmacy that can trace their lineage back further. One hundred and three years after the creation of Birmingham’s first pharmacy school, I enrolled on the MPharm at Aston and, by and large, I’ve been here ever since. In 1998, there were only 12 schools of pharmacy in England. Between 1999 and 2009, the number of pharmacy schools increased from 12 to 21 and the number of pharmacy students more than doubled from 4,200 to 9,800. At the time of writing a further three English universities are working towards full accreditation of their MPharm and at least one further institution is currently developing an MPharm degree.
The sector is likely to enter a state of flux in the near future. Competition amongst It should be highlighted that this increase schools will intensify and some schools in the number of schools of pharmacy may be forced to downsize and/or close has not been driven by demand for completely. Should the axe fall, where the more pharmacists. A recent report from axe will fall is impossible to predict but Aston the Centre for Workforce Intelligence has the advantage of being well established, suggested that, by 2040, we could be For more comments follow with a good reputation and a track record of producing between 11,000 and 19,000 @josephbush on Twitter producing graduates who go on to pass the ‘excess pharmacists’ (that is: supply will GPhC’s registration assessment (recently outstrip demand by those amounts). released data show that, for the years 2011A cap on the number of pharmacy students was considered and ultimately rejected by the previous 14, Aston had the fourth best pass rate of any institution government in line with their policy of removing student in Great Britain). We will not be complacent though - I’ve already pencilled in the bicentenary of pharmacy at Aston in numbers caps wherever possible. the diary as an excellent excuse for a knees-up (assuming I’ll The potential negative ramifications of this are obvious to be able to flex my 116-year-old knee joints). anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the law of supply and demand - downward pressure on pharmacists’ Dr Joseph Bush is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice and terms and conditions; in turn, the pharmacy degree becomes Director of the MPharm Programme at Aston. The views and a much less attractive proposition for young people; the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do quality of students on MPharm degrees declines; then the not necessarily reflect the official views of Aston University or number of students on MPharm degrees begins to realign its School of Pharmacy. itself to the demands of the market with potential reductions in the size of schools of pharmacy and/or the closure of some - 21 -