The Brain Drain of Qualified Clinical Pharmacy Professionals in PakistanâÂÂsPharmacy Education: A Retrospective Study

Introduction: The pharmacy education environment of a developing country like Pakistan is on course of development. Progress was made in 2004 to incorporate the courses of clinical pharmacy in the Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D) degree with a health care insight. Failure to develop a teaching workforce prior to initiation of the above said plan rendered clinical pharmacy to be taught by non-clinical pharmacy professionals who have impinged the course throughout country’s pharmacy academia. They assume the foreign qualified clinical pharmacy professionals as a professional threat. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in Pharmacy teaching universities of Karachi, Pakistan. Data of the last 10 years of different pharmacy teaching institutes in Karachi, Pakistan was sought. Results: A total of 4 private and 1 public university data was available which showed that the total number of qualified clinical pharmacists increased from 2 in 2004 to 3 in 2004 and remained at 4 till 2011, the highest number of clinical pharmacists were seen teaching in pharmacy institute were 7 in the year 2012. However the number again dropped to 6 in 2013 and to just 1 in 2014. All of them reasoned the pharmaco-political situation of the country’s pharmacy education. Conclusion: The study highlights the current dilemma of the brain drain of clinical pharmacy professionals from the pharmacy education environment of the country and is a wakeup call for the Pharmacy Council of Pakistan (PCP) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to formulate legislations and guidelines in the said regard.