Enhancement of Qualitative Pharmacists’ Training: Canadian Experience

Abstract The necessity for the development and restructuring of pharmacists’ training programs to correspond their increased practical role in society has been substantiated. It has been determined that Canada for the last decade has introduced a lot of changes concerning enhancement of pharmacists’ training, among which the following are of special interest: fulfillment of the training with a strict accordance with the accreditation standards, selective admission to colleges of pharmacists, assessment of students’ critical thinking and teaching methods, improvement of courses content delivery, interprofessional cooperation, development of practical experimental education, clinical rotations programs, mentoring programs etc. It has been defined that accreditation standards for pharmacists’ training in Canada reflect professional and educational attributes that intend to develop practicing, clinical, patient-focused pharmacists. They outline that pharmacy education of high quality depends on multiple components, including general knowledge, basic and professional sciences, and professional practice experience. The pharmacy curriculum is expected to embrace the scope of contemporary practice responsibilities as well as emerging roles that ensure the rational and safe use of drugs in the individualized care of patients. In the research it has been found out that admission of students to pharmacy colleges is organized so that to select students possessing inborn leadership skills and those of decision making. A number of techniques and tests for admission have been analyzed. Teaching strategies of theory in practice, critical thinking, clinical reasoning, inference and decision-making, which are widely used in Canadian pharmacy education, have been characterized. It has been stated that professional cooperation between medical and pharmacy students in Canada is an approach to health protection aimed at the patient and is team-based. It underlines one’s strengths and skills related to health care provision and should be taken into account. Clinical experimental rotations are one more approach that should be taken into consideration by Ukrainian educators and legislators (early involvement of students to establishments for taking care of patients and rotations of both senior and junior students when the former mentor the latter).