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pharming_in_koreaNew things are on the horizon for pharmacy education in Korea.
Similar to Europe, Korean high school students take school specific exams to gain admission to college programs, including schools of pharmacy, law, medicine. Until 2008, students who aspired to become pharmacists entered 4-year Bachelor of Science programs in pharmacy and could become licensed pharmacists upon graduation. In 2009, the 2+4 pharmacy curriculum was implemented. The class of 2015 will be the first class to graduate from 6-year pharmacy programs, which include previously excluded APPE's.
After graduation, they have several options:
1. Work in a community pharmacy
2. Work as a hospital pharmacist
3. Pursue post graduate programs (first year is called internship, second year is called residency)
4. Pursue Masters or PhD degrees in pharmacy
The fourth option provides research experience that is often required to work in the pharmaceutical companies or to pursue a career in academia.
As Lena described in an earlier post, clinical pharmacy practice in Korea is in its pioneering stage currently.
Currently the Clinical Pharmacy laboratory of Dr. Jung-Mi Oh at SNU is the only place in Korea that offers the clinical pharmacy experience for pharmacy (graduate) students (hence the name). The new 2+4 pharmacy curriculum is an attempt to provide a more clinically oriented training for future pharmacists. The 4-year undergraduate pharmacy programs were mostly didactic, with one month of hospital IPPE experience that is purely observational. This is partly because licensure for pharmacy interns does not exist in Korea. Only licensed pharmacists are allowed to be on the wards. I am grateful that us UCSF students are allowed to shadow the pharmacists on the wards.
The graduate students in the laboratory expressed that they are grateful for the clinical experience to supplement their didactic education. These graduate students are extremely hard workers, who do their best to manage the workload of providing daily clinical services to the SNU hospital (SNUH), as well as their individual graduate research projects, the laboratory’s group research projects, and more didactic studies of pharmacotherapy. According to the discussions I have had with some of these students, there is a general consensus that the clinical training in Dr. Oh’s laboratory offers them more training to be excellent pharmacists.
Pharmacists in Korea and America share similar challenges. As the scope of pharmacists expands in Korea, pharmacists constantly have to prove their value as an integral part of the health care team.
- Tae
