PCI planning to start patient counselling to help pharmacists fight e-pharmacies

New Delhi, June 27, 2022 :

The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) is planning to start patient counselling in collaboration with major pharmacy stores in the country in order to bring in a differentiation to the services pharmacists can offer and to win the threat of e-pharmacies. The Council is also working on a new syllabus with widened course coverage and hands-on training, in order to take the profession to global standards, said Montu M Patel, president of PCI.

Speaking to the stakeholders in a felicitation organised by CL Baid Mehta College of Pharmacy, in Chennai, owned and managed by The Tamil Nadu Chemists and Druggists Educational Trust, Patel, who took charge as the president of PCI in April, 2022, said that patient counselling is the one weapon for the pharmacists to fight against e-pharmacies, which is a serious threat to the pharmacist profession.

“Under the Pharmacy Practice Regulation, 2015, the pharmacists can do patient counselling and give medicine. You can charge for the counselling services, based on your expertise. But we are not counselling, we are only trading,” he said.

The PCI will tie up with major pharmacy stores to offer patient counselling services as a beginning, from this year. Plans are to introduce counselling system for the essential drugs list.

Online pharmacies are illegal in India, but still they operate with the support of some state drug regulators and other departments, burning funds infused by foreign investors, he told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting. PCI has formulated a committee to fight against the e-pharmacies, and given its representation to the government against e-pharmacies. High levels of unemployment will occur if the e-pharmacies take the lead stage.

The PCI is in the process of changing the rules and regulations and syllabus to match the global standards. The vision is to develop clinical pharmacists, like those that practice in developed countries like US, Canada and others.

“We are working on the whole education regulation, bringing in specialisation and super specialisation in pharmacy education and we have introduced management, accounting and other soft skills also in our syllabus. There will be foreign languages such as German, Japanese and others in the syllabus so that our pharmacists can go to those countries for job,” he said while addressing the gathering

The PCI has sent the proposal to the central government for the introduction of a clinical pharmacy course, and it is likely that clinical pharmacy course for all pharmacy fraternity will be introduced this year.

The Council is also taking steps to include medical devices into the syllabus, so that the pharmacy students can also join the medical devices related jobs in the drug regulator’s office. PCI is also working on inclusion of pharmacy as one of the options in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams for civil service posts.

With the ministry of health expected to launch a new portal under the National Health Administration will help the pharmacists to get their data uploaded and be translated to any foreign language so that they can use the same information for job opportunities overseas. This will help in exports of trained manpower in the sector from India to other countries, he added.

Plans are also in place to train the students on adverse drug reaction, side effects and other health related aspects so that each student can support 10 houses and upload their health related details to the national portal. Each college will have to take care of 10 villages in this way, thus generating large scale health data across the country, for the benefit of the healthcare initiatives in the country. There are 3,500 colleges, and four lakh pharmacists passing out from these colleges every year.

PCI will conduct the exit examination for pharmacy students from this year, he added. It will also introduce a new scheme to promote new pharmacy colleges for the rural area. Pharmabiz