Abstract:

The degree in pharmacy has many professional opportunities, among which are the following: Community pharmacy, specialist pharmacist, state pharmacists, health inspection, pharmaceutical distribution, research, pharmaceutical industry, teaching...etc.

Having consulted the professional opportunities in which our graduates are currently working and in order to satisfy the request for training on the employability of current students, the Faculty of Pharmacy organised the "1st Conference on Pharmaceutical Professional Opportunities".

Initially, graduate students (n=129) were surveyed for their current occupation. Among them, pharmacy (40.31%), hospital specialities (17.05%), research (8.53%), pharmaceutical industry (4.65%), public administration (4.65%), teaching (3.88%) and others (6.20%). Of the students surveyed, 13.18% considered their academic training with respect to their work performance to be "excellent", 26.36% considered it to be "good" and only 3.10% considered it to be "fair", 1.55% considered it to be "bad", with no results for the rating of "terrible".

Based on these data, the "1st Conference on Professional Pharmaceutical Opportunities" was designed, with two different sessions. The first dealt with "Professional opportunities in the private sector", including the Pharmaceutical Industry, Pharmaceutical Distribution and Community Pharmacy. The second session dealt with "Professional opportunities in the public sector", including the Corps of State Pharmacists, Resident Pharmacists, Health Inspectors and Public Health Pharmacists.

All the speakers, up to a total of 20, were graduate students. Our aim was to bring the pharmaceutical activity closer to our students and to make them consider the different career opportunities as feasible. The conference was designed with the aim of transmitting the personal and professional experience of the speakers up to their current position and to discuss the current situation of each professional sector.

The conference was very well received with 109 students participating out of a total of 481 students enrolled from 1st to 4th grade.

The satisfaction survey showed that the conference had been very useful for our students, opening up new horizons and professional prospects for the future.

Keywords:

Work employability, pharmaceutical profession.