NDPA asks state and Central govts to create clinical pharmacist cadres
Chennai, July 24, 2021:
With the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) notifying the post of ‘clinical pharmacist (CP)’ with Pharm D as basic qualification, the National Doctor of Pharmacy Association (NDPA) has written to the Union health ministry and to all of the governments in the states and Union territories that clinical pharmacist cadre should be created on the basis of the new regulation.
The Union health ministry has been urged to make the required legal framework for the states and UTs to enable them create CP posts and direct them to expedite steps with the respective state public service commission/recruitment agency to call for applications for the post of clinical pharmacist in all hospitals and medical colleges.
As per the seventh pay commission, the pay scale of the clinical pharmacist must be fixed as Level 10.
PCI made the new regulation, Pharmacy Practice Regulations 2021, by amending PPR 2015 and notified it in the government gazette dated June 30, 2021 specifying Pharm D as the basic qualification for CP post.
NDPA, the association of Pharm Ds from all states in the country, has said in its letter to the governments that, from 2008 to till date, 27,000 students have passed out the doctoral pharmacy programme and every year 10,825 students are coming out from various institutions. Dr Ramprasad Kakasaheb Nagare, national president of the NDPA who passed out from one of the two government colleges that conduct the program in Maharashtra, said CP post must be created in each government and private hospital. In the government sector, it should be started in all PHCs, CHCs, district hospitals and in medical colleges. The number of posts should be measured as per the patient ratio in the hospital. The working pattern of the CPs must be based on global guidelines.
The association has demanded that admission to the Pharm D programme should be provided through a national level single entrance examination. Without passing a qualifying test, no student should be admitted to the doctoral pharmacy program. Dr Ramprasad said, in Maharashtra, the only two government colleges that run Pharm D in the country (Aurangabad and Amaravathi) conduct entrance tests for admissions.
Regarding the necessity of creating CP post in all major hospitals, the president of the NDPA said a Pharm D student in his sixth year of study gets training in speciality wards of medicine, surgery, paediatrics, gynaecology and obstetrics, psychiatry, skin and VD and orthopaedics. A clinical pharmacist cares for patients by collaborating with physicians and other professionals in a healthcare setting. PharmaBiz