Ha Ha, reading the comments concerning colour blindess brought a smile to my face. Utter nonsense I must say. I've been a pharmacist now for over 15 years (UK and Malaysian registered) and I have never heard of an employee being subjected to a colour blindness test.

To be honest, I know of a number of colleagues who have been colour blind and 'ethical concerns' have never been an issue. Most tablets are not identified by colour, but by unique identification markings.

With regard to the dispensing practicals, thinking back to my undergraduate days in the UK, none of my dispensing practicals relied on any form of colour testing. Your are presented with a prescription, you interpret, calculate, prepare and label. No colour identification required.

The new CGPA entry of 3.5 is expected to come in next year. However a word of warning. If you enter a pharmacy school with a 3.5, when it comes to eventual registration as a pharmacist, the pharmacy board will check your SPM results, and you will need a minimum of B grades in science subjects.

Not many Universities in Malaysia accept the Diploma in Pharmacy as an entry qualification.

The question of exemption is determined by the pharmacy board and so far, no pharmacy school offers this. The reason being that since the Pharmacy board will scrutinise all pharmacy graduate applications for registration, they will reject anything that does not follow the conventional route (that is, four years at university under a recognised BPharm program).

An Indonesian University in Bandung offers direct entry into year 3, for those with a diploma in Pharmacy. However the problem is, there is no guarantee these students will be allowed to register once they complete their studies and return to Malaysia.

Its commendable you are considering working in a pharmacy environment to gain experience. All pharmacy students in the UK for example are expected to gain work experience during thier summer vacations. This will also help you when it comes to proving committment during interviews. The imporance of practical training for students is demonstrated by UKM's recent MOU with Guardian were pharmacy students get the opportunity to work in Guardian pharmacies up and down the country for 2 weeks a year (years 1, 2 and 3).

With regard to zstan's comments, of course you may end up doing quite a lot of 'cashier' work or become 'cheap labour', but you need to start somewhere and if your hoping to make clinical decisions during your first pharmacy job your probably expecting too much.

Too be honest, I don't think you will learn very much at this stage by working in a pharmacy (especially in Malaysia, the community pharmacy network is not training oriented). Focus on getting into a pharmacy school and then find work during your summer vactions.

In 2015, compulsary service for pharmacists will be abolished (agreed by Lembaga Pharmacy last week). This means it will be a level playing field and Malaysian pharmacy graduates will be competing for the limited number of available pupilage places (across all sectors including hospital and community).

So its important to choose your pharmacy school carefully. Graduates from the new small private colleges (with no proven track record, non-malaysian and non-pharmacist teaching staff) will be competing head-to-head with graduates from the more established schools such as UKM, UM, UIA etc.

Good luck.

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Added on October 6, 2011, 8:13 pmRM199 seems rather pricey. UKM sells the BNF to students for RM120, at a profit (not subsidised). There is a bookstore near HKL which also sells for around RM120.

This post has been edited by pharmy: Oct 6 2011, 08:15 PM

Yes, that is a very possible scenario.

Lembaga Pharmacy initially introduced the three-year compulsary service to address the shortage of pharmacists in Malaysia. However at the same time, the massive and uncontrolled proliferation of pharmacy schools will mean an equally massive number of pharmacy graduates looking for pupillage placements.

Will there be sufficient pupilage places in 2015? That remains to be seen.

What is certain, is the best graduates from the best schools will have priority.

Of course external graduates (Monash, Nottingham) and those from twinning programs (IMU, Taylors) have the added advantage of the possiblilty of registration in the country of origin.


This post has been edited by pharmy: Oct 6 2011, 10:07 PM

True. Malaysian Pharmacy schools are full and definitely don't need encouragement.

The politician’s words of encouragement are possibly for any new private pharmacy schools he may be involved in.

Masterskills for instance has been allowed to take in 100 BPharm students and MAHSA has accepted 70 students for its first batch. Considering both institutions have just started their BPharm programs and most of their staff are Indian nationals (official guidelines set a maximum of 50 until first batch graduate and require 70-80% of staff to be Malaysian registered pharmacists), this all reeks of political influence.

On the other hand, institutions like SEGI are struggling to get their BPharm program approved.

Money talks.

This post has been edited by pharmy: Oct 8 2011, 07:37 PM

For successful transition into a pharmacy program, chemistry is a must, together with one other science subject, either biology or physics. Mathematics is also an important subject. However, not having biology at SPM is not a major issue.

With regard to registration, you will need to get the exact details once they are published by the pharmacy board.

This post has been edited by pharmy: Nov 10 2011, 04:27 PM

OK, updated information from pharmacy board regarding those who enter a pharmacy school with a diploma qualification:

For those with a Diploma in Science (Chemistry or Biology or Physics) a CGPA of 3.75 or higher is required

For those with a Diploma in Pharmacy a CGPA 3.50 or higher is required.

In addition, the following will be looked at by the pharmacy board. Without which registration may be affected.

Students entering schools with diploma must also have passes in SPM with a minimum of 5 grade B's in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics (or Additional Mathematics) and one other subject in school certificate or equivalent.

If you enter pharmcy with STPM or 'A' levels, the SPM requirements do not apply.

Some interesting points.

Student / staff ratio is indeed important. In fact it has become quite an important indicator of the overall ability of an institution to effectively deliver a particular program. The Malaysian pharmacy board and the MQA both specify a minimum ratio. Teaching is not easy, considering the amount of preparation time that goes into a teaching session. Thus when staff are faced with a situation where they have a workload of around 30 hours a week (which is typical for private colleges), you are not talking about quality. Even with the best staff in the world, this situation is not good for staff or students.

With regard to qualifications, I think the emphasis is more on experience, rather than out-and-out qualifications. During my time in Malaysia, I have worked with young phD graduates straight out of University and colleagues with significant practical experience, the difference has always been clear.

In addition, pharmacist qualified lecturers add an extra element with regard to delivery of lectures and classes. Why else does the Malaysian pharmacy board require 80% of teaching staff to be registered pharmacists. A situation where Dosage Form Design (pharmaceutics) is taught by non pharmacists is not an ideal.

At a first year level, pharmacoinformatics refers to the information sources available to pharmacists and how effectively these can be utilized. Clinical trials come much later, at years three or four.

Yes indeed Pharmacy students and Pharmacists need to be proficient in maths, however teaching pure mathematics and statistics just to fill in lecture time, and without any particular context is again, not ideal. You mention "Henderson–Hasselbalch equation, pka, Gibbs free energy, molar, molality" etc. All these have a context, Dosage form design. This has become a very important issue for many UK pharmacy schools, where subjects must be taught with direct relevance to pharmacy.

This post has been edited by pharmy: Jan 19 2012, 02:04 AM