The University of Navarra is hosting the VI International congress of Education Higher Education in Pharmaceutical Sciences (EDUSFARM), which brings together every two years students, professors and professionals of Pharmacy with the goal to share and address the main challenges in the training of future pharmacists of the 22 Schools from all over Spain.

The meeting, which will take place until Wednesday, June 22, will begin with the meeting of the National lecture of Deans of Schools of Pharmacy of Spain and the coordinators of supervised stays of the centers. position After the welcome by the Dean of Pharmacy of Navarra, the inaugural lecture will be given by Francisco Javier Fernandez, director communication of Farmaindustria.

On Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22, four round tables have been organized on innovation professor in the field of care, the profile demanded by employers, the value of international experience in pharmacy programs of study and work end of Degree and new competencies for the beginning of the profession. Ravi Sharm, head of primary care integration and lead GP practice pharmacist at Green Light Company, will bring the congress to a close with a talk on the future role of pharmacists in primary care. 

"The drug has diversified."

According to Adela López de Cerain, dean of the University of Navarra's PharmacySchool , the university teaching is changing a lot: "In recent years the emphasis is being placed not only on the transmission of knowledge, but on aspects such as the acquisition of the pharmacist's own competencies in simulation environments, knowing how to think, searching for knowledge in original sources, acquiring scientific methodology, learning communication techniques, sustaining ethical behavior, encouraging curiosity and entrepreneurship, putting knowledge and skills on internship through the performance of tutored and extracurricular practices, acquiring experiences of internationalization, etc...".

The pharmacist, recalls the dean, continues to be the specialist in the drug, but this drug has diversified: "it is no longer just small molecules, but biomolecules; the interaction of the drug with the patient, its constitution Genetics and its environment are better known; patients are better trained and are organized in associations; and both community pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry, the health authorities themselves, etc. are also changing". For all these reasons, this congress shows the need "for all Schools to be in touch with reality and to know how to transmit it to students", so that they leave the classroom "prepared to face the challenges of the present and the future", emphasizes the professor and chair of Toxicology.