Pharmacognosy and New Trends of B. Pharm Syllabi

Abstract

Objective: The Pharmacy profession has evolved from its conventional drug focused basis to an advanced patient focused basis over the years. Accordingly, many universities worldwide are modifying their Curricula in order to reflect this change.Methods: This paper investigates and compares the syllabi of B. Pharm for different Universities in Africa and Asia. Pharmacy Syllabi of the included Universities is presented in the form of Sectors, i.e. Pharmaceutical Sciences, Clinical Pharmacy, Biomedical, Training and University Requirements. Percentage analysis of credit hours allotted to courses of each Sector performed with special emphasis on courses of Pharmacognosy and Pharmaceutical Science in comparison to courses of Clinical Pharmacy.There is a substantial decrease in teaching hours of Pharmaceutical Sciences, particularly Pharmacognosy within the B. Pharm Curricula of some of the included Universities at the expense of including more courses in Clinical Pharmacy.Results: Pharmacists are scientists as well as clinicians, and basic science knowledge such as pharmaceutical sciences, give pharmacy graduates critical scientific foundations, in this regard, the reduction in pharmaceutical sciences content in a pharmacy curriculum may compromise the competence of pharmacy graduates, as the drug experts from the basic science level to the clinical level.Conclusion: The impact of reducing pharmaceutical science content, may compromise the Pharmacist ability to assume certain duties in the countries included in the study. This in consideration that Clinical Pharmacy is not widely practiced in the investigated countries and its application is limited compared to other job opportunities available for Pharmacy graduates of these countries such as Community Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Industries, marketing and sales and utilization of natural resources of medicinal plants by research and development units.Recommendations on how to avoid such decrease in teaching hours of Pharmaceutical Courses and fulfil the job requirements in the above countries are given.

Study on Pharmacognosy Curricula in UAE B. Pharm Programmes and Possible Implications

“…This coincides with the findings of Shandal and coworkers. 7 It may substantially affect the understanding of graduates of Pharmacy towards Herbal Drug use, side effects, and Herb-Drug interaction necessary for Patient care within the Health Care System. It may affect the discovery and development of medicinal drugs from herbs in these countries.…”

“…under developed. 6 Shandal and co-workers, 7 reported on the need of a balanced curricula between patient -oriented courses and other pharmaceutical sciences. To our knowledge no other workers reported on the possible implications of pharmacognosy curricula in UAE, Africa and Middle east.…”