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Young pharmacists entering the profession don’t need all this doom and gloom from their elders, says Portsmouth pharmacy student, Mala Mahasuria

IT WASN’T UNTIL I WAS 17 that I decided pharmacy was the career for me. When I was accepted for the MPharm degree I was elated. However my enthusiasm has often been met with bemusement. In every community pharmacy I have worked in, someone has come up to me and said something like: “Why are you becoming a pharmacist?”

Now, I am aware of the constant uphill struggle we seem to face as a profession. But I would like to remain ambitious and enthusiastic about my chosen career path. Pharmacy is an ubiquitous profession; we should be proud and excited to utilise this fact. Yet we fail to tell people about the unique skills we have. As a consequence, there is a lack of public awareness about how we can help them. This in turn affects how the career is advertised to potential students.

Recently, I have seen articles sent out to the student population about the best degrees. All the classics are there: medicine, dentistry, veterinary science, law… but where is pharmacy? Our degree is challenging, innovative and modern – the problem is that we’re not telling anybody.

Our innocent ideas have the possibility of becoming reality one day

Pessimistic

Pharmacists get so caught up in the more negative aspects of practice that they forget people like me are the future. And this future isn’t based on pessimism and bitterness but on channelling passion and novel ideas into excellent patient care. From my own point of view, I find ‘selling’ the degree to other people very easy. The course is contemporary and integrates with pharmacology, biomedical science and even medicine. Yes, medicine! When I tell pharmacists what I have learnt, even in my first year, they are always surprised.

Trust us

Pharmacists need to trust and listen to those of us entering the profession. Our innocent ideas have the possibility of becoming a reality one day. What we need from our more experienced colleagues are positive words, support and time invested in us.

So, instead of always talking about the problems facing pharmacy, why not discuss with future pharmacists some potential solutions? Rather than questioning why a student is entering the profession, ask about his/her aspirations for pharmacy in the future. Is that really too much to ask?