Pharmacy Degree Sought

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31094, 24 June 1966, Page 7

Pharmacy Degree Sought

fIV.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 23.

A petition from the president of the Pharmaceutical Society (Mr R. F. D. Crosby) asking that all education for professional pharmacy be at the University of Otago or some other suitable university was presented in Parliament yesterday.

The petition was also signed by Mr G. D. Catchpole, of the Chemists’ Service Guild, Mr S. G. Little, of the Hospital Pharmacists’ Association, and Mr J. A. Robertson, of the Ethical Pharmaceuticals’ Association It was presented by Mr W. B. Tennent (Govt., Manawatu). The Pharmacy Board, representing 2000 registered pharmaceutical chemists, considered that only a degree course in pharmacy at a university would be sufficient to educate pharmacists to dispense and advise the public

and the medical profession about modern drugs, said the petition.

Neither the present twoyear course at the School of Pharmacy, nor the three-year course envisaged when the school was transferred to Heretaunga, would be adequate to meet future needs of the profession, the petition said.

“The majority of members of the Pharmaceutical Society have expressed the opinion that the dominating need of the profession is an excellent and internationally recognised degree,” the petition said.

“If the pharmaceutical profession in New Zealand is to cope with the future demands to be placed upon it by the public and the medical profession, it must have a level of training which will produce pharmacists capable of accepting a high degree of responsibiity and of meeting the expected developments in the pharmaceutical sphere.

I “New Zealand has a high ! reputation for the calibre of ithe scientists it produces, .but so far there has been little achievement in the field of drug science,” the petition said. If the limited-intake degree course at the University of Otago was expanded and adapted the profession’s requirements could be met with “estimable advantage” to the profession, the country and future students.

A single integrated pharmacy degree course at the university would meet this requirement more economically and logically than would either the present or proposed schemes. The petition said that pharmaceutical research under the auspices of a university would obtain greater recognition internationally than research done under other circumstances.

The petition will be considered by a Select Committee.