Quality and Competences Ateuropean Standardsin the Area of Medicine-food Interactionsfor the Students Following a Study Programme in Pharmacy, Nutrition and Dietetics

Abstract

The training of future specialists in the area of health enabling them to face the practical reality can only be ensured by high quality university education offering the students the possibility to be trained through the most performing means. The increased incidence of pathologies specific to the modern society require urgent competitive and high quality training of specialists, whose role should be to ensure improvement and preservation of public health. A better training of the students specialising in Pharmacy, as well as in Nutrition and Dietetics can be achieved by developing a module on “Medicine-Food Interactions”. The university training of future pharmacists puts a significant focus on the interactions between medicines, while the interactions between medicine and food, medicine and food supplementsare less considered, although it is of major importance that the pharmacist and the dietician know them. This could avoid phenomena of therapeutic inefficiency, toxic adverse events and even self-medication, which is often the case for food supplements. The absence of this subject in the curricula, as well as the social and economic needs, the strategies in the health area, the requirements on the labour market, the need for pertinenttherapeutic and nutritional advice for the sick population,and the training of human resources in these areas in the European Union impose a more complex training of the students in the area of medicine-food interactions.