The 2011 PHARMINE report on pharmacy and pharmacy education in the European Union

Abstract

The PHARMINE consortium consists of 50 universities from European Union member states or other European countries that are members of the European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy (EAFP). EU partner associations representing community (PGEU), hospital (EAHP) and industrial pharmacy (EIPG), together with the European Pharmacy Students’ Association (EPSA) are also part of the consortium.The consortium surveyed pharmacies and pharmacists in different settings: community, hospital, industry and other sectors. The consortium also looked at how European Union higher education institutions and courses are organised.The PHARMINE survey of pharmacy and pharmacy education in Europe produced country profiles with extensive information for EU member states and several other European countries. These data are available at: http://www.pharmine.org/losse_paginas/Country_Profiles/.This 2011 PHARMINE report presents the project and data, and some preliminary analysis on the basic question of how pharmacy education is adapted to pharmacy practice in the EU.

A Comparison of Patient-Centered Care in Pharmacy Curricula in the United States and Europe

“…33 In the 2011 PHARMINE report, "medical sciences" represented the main subject area in pharmacy education in the European Union (28%). 34,35 However, this finding could be misleading because the "medical sciences" subject area included a mix of courses, such as human anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, parasitology, dispensing processes, prescription analysis, and pharmaceutical care. Based on the ACPE course categorization, some of these courses belonged to the clinical sciences, and others belonged to the biomedical/basic sciences (eg, anatomy and physiology) or pharmaceutical sciences (eg, pharmacology, Appendix 1).…”

“…Other studies have compared pharmacy curricula across EU member countries and grouped courses for pharmacy degrees into different subject areas (Appendix 1). [33][34][35] However, two limitations were present in these studies: the allocation of each course to a subject area seems to have been based on the course names and not on course content analysis and the subject areas were based on the traditional areas of education for pharmacists, more associated with basic sciences, that existed prior to the clinical movement. According to the 1994 report of the Advisory Committee on Pharmaceutical Training, "chemical subjects" account for more required course hours in the range of 25%-46% across European countries.…”

Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Education in the Pharmacy Curriculum at European Universities

“…the PhARMine project, which was funded with support from the european commission and aimed at gaining hard data on pharmacy and pharmacy education in europe, assessed about 290 individual institutions, created a database of universities and surveyed the teaching and learning methods applied in pharmacy study; impact of the Bologna principles (3); pharmacy curriculum; impact of ec Directive 2005/36/ ec (9) on the course length and content and traineeship and the applied quality assurance systems (2). one hundred and ninety-five faculties of pharmacy in 25 EU member states (the project excludes cyprus and luxembourg) were included in the project with an average number of students of 817 ± 385.…”

“…(6). there are studies on the inclusion of biotechnology in the pharmacy schools in the USA (8,12,13,16,17,19) but there is no systematized information about european universities with the exception of the reports available from the PhARMine project (2) and very few studies made for selected countries (11,22).…”

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Output of EU Pharmacy Departments

“…There was one department per EU country. The departments chosen were members of the EU PHARMINE ("Pharmacy Education in Europe") network [8]. It should be noted that there is no EU ranking of pharmacy departments so no selection on the basis of ranking was made.…”