The Doctor of Pharmacy Degree (PharmD)
The Doctor of Pharmacy Degree (PharmD) is a relatively new postgraduate program offered in the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Alexandria, Egypt, since 2001, to qualified pharmacists interested in pursuing a career in hospital pharmacy. The program is designed to produce a scientifically and technically competent pharmacist to provide quality pharmaceutical care and who can assume expanded responsibilities in a hospital setting. Modifications are made continuously to improve the program.
Program Aims & Objectives
- To provide hospitals, within the healthcare system in Egypt and in neighboring countries, with pharmacists capable of delivering quality clinical pharmacy services based on the philosophy of pharmaceutical patient care and health care team. The program strives to ensure that graduates will have the clinical and professional skills necessary for the optimization of therapeutic outcomes that improve and maintain the patient’s quality of life within the constraints of the health care system in Egypt.
- To provide pharmacists the opportunity to enhance their ability to provide quality pharmaceutical care in a hospital setting, and to develop the skills necessary for delivering clinical pharmacy services through a postgraduate 2-year programme. The program is designed to offer the participants an effective learning experience with input from Pharmacy and Medicine academia as well as from University Hospital clinical experts.
Program structure
The PharmD program requires the completion of 37 credit hours expanding over 4 semesters as follows:
- 26 credit hours of courses spread over the 4 semesters
- Structured supervised hospital training spread over 2 semesters, involving 8 specialties/ two weeks rotations, spread over 2 semesters (8 credit hours)
- 3 credit hours for the dissertation in the 4th semester
Curriculum
The PharmD curriculum combines four important components that together form the foundation for maximized clinical services provided by the pharmacist and qualification for future roles:
1. The first component provides orientation to the development of professional skills required for the provision of quality pharmaceutical care to hospitalized patients such as the concept and practice of pharmaceutical care, elements of hospital pharmacy and electronic drug management systems, information sources, self-learning and critical appraisal, clinical research, communication skills including presentation skills for problem-based case presentations, responsibilities, ethics and liabilities of clinical pharmacy practice, in addition to leadership and management for future roles as pharmacists.
2. The second component is lecture-format didactic courses to provide knowledge necessary for the up-coming clinical training. It includes among other core and elective courses:
a- Pharmacotherapeutics to provide an understanding of the factors involved in the safe, effective and economic use of medicines in order to maximize therapeutic outcomes and improve the patient’s quality of life
b- Clinical pharmacokinetics for population or patient-specific individualization of drug therapy modules and therapeutic drug monitoring
c- Innovations in drug therapy including new drug delivery systems, personalized medicine, nanomedicines, etc
d) Pharmaco-economics
e) Pharmaco-epidemiology
f) Evidence-based pharmacy practice
3. The third component is clinical practice rotations that take place in the Main University of Alexandria Teaching Hospital, and strives to develop, in the pharmacist, the necessary skills to effectively deliver clinical pharmacy services, to present clinical cases with constructive feedback from medical supervisors.
4. The fourth component is a practice-oriented dissertation. The topic picked by each student generally arises from clinical problems and insights he/she experienced in providing pharmaceutical services in hospitals they are affiliated to or while on ward during rotation.