Internship programmes in the pharmacy faculties and their compliance with the standards: A study in Turkey

Abstract

Objective: Pharmacy faculties endeavour to equip future pharmacy candidates with up-to-date drug knowledge and skills to prepare them for future professional life. To train pharmacists to play an active role in each field of pharmaceuticals according to a wide range of the pharmaceutical industry, is a challenging process that needs to be well-planned. The internship programme is one of the building blocks of this challenging process. Methods: The document analysis method was used to conduct this research. The material of the study consists of the internship guidelines of a total of 48 programmes. Results: 79.5% of pharmacy faculties comply with standards in terms of internship periods and their durations. Another important point is internship areas and Turkey provides many options for these internships. Although 97.5% of the 39 pharmacy faculties (with a total of 43 pharmacy programmes) were up to date, 20.5% did not comply with the standards prepared by the Council of Higher Education in line with the European Union's directive no. 2005/36/EC. Discussion: It is not possible to discuss homogeneity between Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in terms of pharmacy programmes’ internship practices as there exist significant differences between them. However, when Turkey is considered alone, 85.7% of faculties carried out internship practices with minor changes by adhering to the standards.