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Overcoming the struggles faced by students in becoming competent health professionals – by Yaw Kyei – pharmacy student

Careers and University, Pharmacy

“As healthcare students, we are faced with struggles and challenges that can often be a deterrent in pursuing our studies. These struggles are different for all and affect each individual differently, but if we cannot overcome these issues, there will be gaps in the healthcare we provide and this will not be ideal for our future patients. The knowledge we learn at our training institutions is valuable, and often is a challenge within itself, but there are external factors that can cause issues for us.

1.   Learning opportunities

Most of us study anywhere from three years to a potential five or six years while potentially working part-time. Ideally, this part time work would be in our chosen field of study, but this is often difficult to ascertain. As a pharmacy student, I have the opportunity to work in a community pharmacy where I can use my learnt knowledge to provide healthcare to patients. However, some of my peers aren’t as fortunate to have a work environment to continually learn in. For those who do, they may not even be working to their full potential. For example, I know individuals that work in community pharmacy but are constricted to the registers instead of working partially in the dispensary where they would be better able to apply their knowledge and learn new information.

Each business would be different, and I can’t speak for other professions, but I believe that if you are a pharmacy student and are employed at a pharmacy with the title of pharmacy student, not pharmacy assistant, that there should be a set minimum number of hours that you get to work in the dispensary during your allocated work hours per fortnight. By having a set number of hours, it allows you to learn in an environment that may be different to your clinical placement environment. Realising that it would hard to implement, I would ask for the support of the National Australian Pharmacy Students’ Association (NAPSA) to help define guidelines that best benefit pharmacy students in their workplace.

2.   Employability

The prospect of employability weighs on all students who study a degree. However, in healthcare I feel like this is a greater challenge once we graduate. We often see and hear of the ads that say:

WANTED: Emergency Nurse with at least 10 years’ experience

This is just too daunting because we know we need the job and that we are qualified for the job, but we don’t have the pre-requisite to essentially ‘move onto the next subject’. I know that a good percentage of my current colleagues and myself included have accepted the fact that they will have to undertake further study in order to be further qualified in order to get a job in the future. Most of us have accepted this and aren’t too phased by it, but it affects our current studies as we plan for the future we want. To be honest, I don’t know how to potentially fix this because it’s hard to change the way things are done at a higher level; it’s above my future pay grade level.

There are way more struggles that students are faced with and I just don’t know how we can address them. I would do anything to make sure that all students who study a health degree have the best chances to succeed in their chosen fields, but change is often a difficult thing to achieve.

Best of luck to my fellow health care students in your studies and your futures. We are the future of healthcare and even though it will be tough, the community is placing their trust in us to be the best we can be.”

 

Yaw Kyei is a 3rd Year Bachelor of Pharmacy student at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane.

 

 

 

 

 

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