Context:

In the 21st century, community, and also hospital pharmacists, will play an increasingly important role as partners in the efficient use of the health care resources of the EU.

PHARMINE or PHARMacy education IN Europe is a project, partially funded by the European Commission (LLL programme, Erasmus). Its aims and objectives are to survey the present state of pharmacy education and training in Europe, and on the basis of this survey, formulate recommendations for new competence curricula for pharmacy education and training in the EU. A model for pharmacy education and training for candidate Member States and others will be proposed. Finally, a quality assurance and accreditation scheme for EU pharmacy courses will be set up. PHARMINE will take into account two important issues, (i) the EU directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications and, (ii) the Bologna declaration.

PHARMINE will focus both on recommendations for core education and training and for optional activities such as hospital pharmacy. Hospital pharmacy is a major concern for the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists. During the past years, the EAHP has strived towards recognition of a specialization in hospital pharmacy by the EU. EAHP has succeeded in producing a written amendment on the specialization in hospital pharmacy that has been included in a preliminary version of the Directive of professional qualifications. Although unfortunately, this amendment was not adopted in the final version of the Directive, it was accepted by the European Parliament on its first hearing of the Directive, a vote that could be interpreted as a victory in the history of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists.

The PHARMINE consortium consists of universities which are members of the European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy (EAFP) and EU partner associations representing community, hospital of industrial pharmacy, together with the European Pharmacy Students’ Association and other interested bodies.  In order to reach the aims and objective of the PHARMINE project, a work-plan was set up and divided into 7 work-packages.

Work-package 7 (WP7) is the key work-package in the PHARMINE project. The aims and objectives of PHARMINE WP7 are to produce a databank of pharmacy education and training courses in Europe leading to core pharmacist qualifications and to qualifications required for optional activities such as hospital pharmacy. WP7 aims to survey to what extent the “Bologna” and the “Sectoral profession” (based on 2005/36/EC) models for pharmacy education and training are compatible. WP7 will collect data directly from pharmacy HEIs in the EU, from the EAFP archives, from EAHP and others such as PGEU, EIPG and EPSA. The principal milestone will be the delivery of the data required for the production of white papers on pharmacy education and training in Europe. The main performance indicator is the retrieval of full data from at least one HEI in each Member State that delivers a pharmacy diploma qualification. The success of the PHARMINE project depends upon the quality of the data obtained by this WP7. Once PHARMINE activities are over it is hoped to continue its tasks with the creation of a European Working Group on Pharmacy Education. This will ensure that the information available in the databank is kept up-to-date. If you are interested in PHARMINE please visit: www.pharmine.org.

Teaching goal : to provide the tools (via oral presentations with question and answer sessions) to grasp the aims and objectives, the organisation, the milestones and the performance indicators of the overall PHARMINE project and of work-package 7 (the survey of existing programmes for pharmacy education and training in Europe).

Learning objective : after the seminar, delegates should be able to understand the importance and the nature of the European consortium for pharmacy education and training PHARMINE (PHARMacy education IN Europe).