A new experimental community pharmacy internship module for undergraduate pharmacy students in western Nepal: overview and reflections / 보건의료교육평가

Community pharmacies in Nepal and other South Asian countries are in a mediocre state due to poor regulation and the fact that many pharmacies are run by people with insufficient training in dispensing. This has led to the inappropriate use of medicines. The problems due to poor regulation and the mediocre state of community pharmacies in South Asia encompass both academia and clinical practice. In this paper, a 2-week community pharmacy internship programme completed by 2 graduating pharmacy students of Pokhara University (a Nepalese public university) at Sankalpa Pharmacy, Pokhara, Nepal is illustrated. During the internship, they were systematically trained on store management, pharmaceutical care, counselling skills, the use of medical devices, pharmaceutical business plans, medicine information sources, and adverse drug reaction reporting. An orientation, observations and hands-on training, case presentation, discussion, and feedback from 2 senior pharmacists were used as the training method. A proper community pharmacy internship format, good pharmacy practice standards, and a better work environment for pharmacists may improve the quality of community pharmacies.

Availability of essential medicines in Sudan

Although availability of essential medicines is one of the most important objectives of national medicines' policies, the unavailability of essential medicines remains a major problem for poor countries. The study was carried out to measure availability and duration of out of stock of essential medicines in Sudan. The study was carried out using the World Health Organization [WHO] Operational Package for Assessing and Monitoring Pharmaceutical Situation in Countries format for data collection. On the average, availability of selected essential medicines at the public pharmacy, medicine stores and the private pharmacies was found to be 80.6%, 90.0% and 93.0%, respectively. The survey found the mean duration of stock out at medicines store was 26.5 days and no records available about inventory control at the pharmacy level. Among the states, the study found low availability of medicines at North Kordufan public pharmacies. The study found no statistical significant difference as far as a Developing country concerning availability of medicines at rural or urban areas [p > 0.05]. Generally availability and stock out duration of essential medicines in the Sudan were acceptable