Comparison of Iran’s and World’s Leading Faculties Approved Curriculum in the Field of Pharmacy, in terms of Pharmaceutical Care Education

ABSTRACT Background: Following the changes in the basic concepts of pharmaceutical science, the main opinion in pharmacy practice changed from “drug-oriented pharmacy” to “patient-oriented pharmacy”, leading to changes in the pharmacy education in many aspects.Methods: In the presented study, we compare Iran’s Pharm.D education system and the four of high ranking systems available in the world in term of pharmaceutical care related educations and how much is the portion of this type educations in the curriculum. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with a rank of 2, The University of Michigan with a rank of 7, and the Universities of Pittsburgh and Purdue with ranks of almost under 50 in the world ranking have been selected.Results: The results showed, in the United States (US) colleges about 60.5% of educational program was related to the pharmaceutical care concept. This calculation for the University of Waterloo was about 74%. The Saudi University compared, had about 47% related units. Regarding the Iranian program, when the specialized units after basic science were considered as the professional course, about 24% of them had a relationship with the pharmaceutical care. However, this was in the case that a student chooses the hospital internship instead of industry internship in the final year; otherwise, the percentage would reduce to 22.7%.Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, and regarding internationally accepted standards, we strongly recommend to change the structure of pharmacy curriculum in Iran to improve the ability of students for patient-oriented services.