ENTREPRENEURSHIP SCENARIO AFTER THE PHARMACY EDUCATION_An essay by Dr. T. Shri Vijaya Kirubha

Introduction 

Pharmacy is the art and science of manufacturing and dispensing of drugs prepared by natural and synthetic sources, and using them for the treatment and prevention of diseases. Pharmacy encompasses various professional skills, such as:

·       Knowledge for drug synthesis

·       Quality control tests

·       Detection of degradation products and

·       Storage of pharmaceutical products

·       Dosage form preparation

·       Route of administration

·        Drug-drug and drug -food/herbal interactions.

The responsibility of establishing a link between the realms of health sciences and basic pharmaceutical sciences lies in the hands of the Pharmacist.

Pharmacy education in India has shown phenomenal growth after independence. Due to surplus availability of pharma manpower, it will be beneficial and appropriate if young pharmacy graduates seek out to exploit their full potential by starting their own ventures and thus becoming job generators rather than job seekers.

In the past decade and a half, two very different sectors of the Indian economy have generated enormous wealth and thrown up a record number of billionaires. One of these is the software services industry, which has been in the limelight for a long time. The other, the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, is only now beginning to garner the kind of attention that it has long deserved. Between 2005 and 2013, the pharma industry alone has more than doubled - moving up from $6 billion to over $12 billion in revenues. By 2020, it is expected to be $55 billion in size. Many of the pharmaceutical and healthcare entrepreneurs who have built significant empires are estimated to have a worth well in excess of $1 billion. Thus Pharmacy Entrepreneurship is a necessary tenet for the success of future pharmacists, regardless of their professional environment, but specific to individuals interested in owning and/or operating their own pharmacy.

We need pharmacists who will envision future practice and patient care opportunities, be willing to assume the role of entrepreneur and risk taker, and move forward in these areas despite the potential for great failures on the way to success.

This raises the question to what extent are educational programs stimulating and enhancing pharmacy student’s intellectual curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit throughout their undergraduate, graduate professional, and/or graduate education. Even more important, to what extent are we considering in our admissions processes and procedures for all programs in our colleges and schools the ability to attract and recruit applicants who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and an entrepreneurial spirit in addition to strong academic and interpersonal skills.

The rate of new knowledge in the biomedical, pharmaceutical, and clinical sciences and the massive information and technologies available to clinicians and scientists will continue to explode, providing new opportunities for those who are willing to learn, integrate, and dream of the possibilities. It is critical that we have future graduates with  entrepreneurial spirit who are playing important roles in the rapidly advancing and changing areas of health care and wellness. Our current accreditation standards and guidelines for the education of pharmacists are indeed comprehensive and thorough, but as we continue to focus on more and more specific, required, and recommended elements, 

F Are we losing the opportunities for developing and further enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit of our graduates?

F Do we have enough opportunities in our educational programs for students to tap into their intellectual curiosity or to develop their entrepreneurial spirit?

F  To what extent are pharmacy students offered the opportunities for independent study guided by our faculty members not in 1 or 2 isolated semesters, but rather throughout their course of graduate professional study?

F To what extent do we encourage our students to explore and enhance existing practice opportunities by promoting their entrepreneurial spirit in classrooms, laboratories, and practice experience sites?

We have awards, honors, and recognitions programs that recognize outstanding students for their academics, leadership, community outreach, clinical skills, and research skills, to name a few, but how many that focus on students who have an entrepreneurial spirit? These students may not necessarily be the most academically talented students or most active students in leadership and organizational roles, but they also bring an important element to our colleges and schools, and contributions of these students to the current and future success of our programs should not be overlooked.

History time and again has shown us that many successful individuals have embodied this intellectual curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit. We also have many excellent examples of contemporary individuals in pharmacy education, pharmacy practice, and pharmaceutical and biomedical research who have demonstrated these traits. We should be providing opportunities for these individuals to share their stories with pharmacy students, including not only their achievements but also how they were able to overcome adversity and disappointments throughout their career on their way to success. It is through interactions with such individuals that our students can realize that even the most successful individuals have also had failures and challenges in their professional journey. It is these failures that are often critical to motivating these individuals to stay intellectually curious and to maintain their entrepreneurial spirit on their way to subsequent successes.

We all can speak to our own individual failures and challenges that have enabled us to grow both professional and personally and have formed the foundation for our own intellectual curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit. As we move forward in the continued improvement of our educational programs and in the next generation of accreditation standards, it is critical that we incorporate opportunities to stimulate, enhance, and improve students’ intellectual curiosity and entrepreneurial spirit for pharmacy to maintain its role as a key member of innovative, creative, and dynamic models and systems of health care and health care delivery.

The Pharmacy Colleges in the country thereby should take necessary steps to promote entrepreneurial learning programmes in the pharmacy curriculum so that the pharmacy graduate coming out from the colleges can become self reliant and inspire students towards self employment in their early career. The pharmacy colleges should keep their attention on developing syllabi which not only produces trained manpower for pharmaceutical industry but also produces self reliant entrepreneurial pharmacy graduates which accelerates the process of economic development and growth of the country.

Pharmacy Entrepreneurship – Immediate Need

“The success of the young Entrepreneur will be the key to India’s transformation in                    the new millennium” -DhirubhaiAmbani.

                                 
           A Pharma Technocrat through pharma entrepreneurship can bring a radical change that can meet the challenges of emerging changes due to liberalization and globalization. Fast changing pharma industrial scenario, growing obsolescence in pharmacy curriculum stresses the need for pharma entrepreneurship among the graduates. Pharmacy graduates have a strong blend of mind in science and are capable of maximizing their skills if given the right training. Entrepreneurship development among the pharmacy graduates will be an effective mechanism of renaissance in technology innovations and industrial development of a nation.

Entrepreneurship Development Cell

                 Every Pharmacy College should launch an Entrepreneurship Development Cell with a view to encourage students to consider self employment as a career option, provide training in entrepreneurship through modular courses and to teach the relevance of management. This cell will introduce the concept of entrepreneurship in curricula of pharmacy. It also facilitates self employment and entrepreneurship development through formal and non-formal programmes.

                A faculty development programme can be conducted by the cell to develop professionals in entrepreneurship development so that they can act as resource persons in guiding and motivating the students to take up entrepreneurship as their career. This faculty development programme will provide a platform from which programmes, formal and informal can be conducted to support skill development activities particularly catering to specific areas of requirement, to identify and provide solutions for the problems of small business management and entrepreneurs, to provide training and retraining of entrepreneurs through variety of programmes and to train trainers, counsellors and motivators involved in the development of pharmaceutical entrepreneurship.

Pharmacists should view themselves as entrepreneurs throughout their career development by implying the following:

Ø  Be paranoid. All great leaders fear that they are one day away from losing their edge or business. Technologies that can impact your standing are being developed and people who can do your job cheaper or better are being trained, so what you offer your employer or customer might not be needed in the future. This scenario should generate fear that drives you to keep changing and learning new things. Staying paranoid will keep your knowledge, skills, and abilities sharp and competitive, as well as prepare you for whatever the future has in store.

Ø  Remember that all decisions have risk. Some people say they do not want to become entrepreneurs because making the decision to join a start-up is risky, but they fail to realize that there is also risk in maintaining their current lifestyle and position. All of us are one decision away from not being needed or from getting replaced with someone better or cheaper. Thus, there is risk in staying in a current position, just as there is risk in taking a new one.

Ø  Find Mentors. Each of us should have a network of individuals with whom we can discuss new opportunities. Engaging with those who have different backgrounds and experiences, in addition to those who are doing what you want to do, is important for achieving success.

Conclusion
           The need of the hour is to encourage more entrepreneurship in pharmaceutical sector that the drugs and pharmaceuticals can be produced at affordable prices. Entrepreneurship has more scope for innovative ideas, problem solving attitude and creativity. Pharmacists need to view themselves as entrepreneurs and examine their individual careers as start-up companies.  Those who do so will be prepared to succeed in the future delivery model of health care and achieve professional satisfaction.

“As we look into the future, Leaders will be those that empower others” – Bill Gates.