PharmaConnectMe!

Jaka Brumen

EPSA Immediate Past President 2006/2007

European Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (EPSA) is a non-governmental, non-profit and non-political organization, which represents over 120000 pharmacy students from 34 European countries. EPSA aim is to develop the interests and opinions of European pharmacy students and to encourage contact and co-operation between them. In order to achieve these goals EPSA had to develop different ways to investigate the opinion of the students and motivate them to take an active role in shaping the European pharmacy in the 21^st century.

In a time, where all European university programmes are being redesigned according to the principles of the Bologna process, EPSA was interested in the opinion students had about their pharmacy education, their satisfaction with it and ideas on how to improve it. This problematic was explored in a survey, conducted by EPSA during the 29^th EPSA Annual Congress, Lithuania, 2006. The results of the survey showed a high dissatisfaction among students: more than half of the students were not satisfied with the quality of the offered education, while only 3% of the interviewed were very satisfied with it. To improve the quality of education, it was suggested by the interviewed to include in the curricula more case studies, practical courses and internships. The expressed lack of practical experiences in the pharmacy curricula may be linked to the numerous difficulties pharmacists embrace in trying to meet the expectations of the society. During our lecture we will be linking these two problematics, trying to identify the gap between what students get during the studies and what pharmacists are expected to offer, how can this gap be filled and what is the role of lifelong learning in it. In relation to the treated problematic, the official opinion of EPSA and the opinions of pharmacy students, as expressed in various surveys, will be presented, together with the actions taken by EPSA in order to diminish this gap.