Article from: Uniclues
Course + Year: NUS BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) Y3
Within the medical field, pharmacy students are known as the experts in chemistry. At pharmacy, we learn about the forms medicines come in and the different modes of administration. For example, medicines come in the form of tablets, capsules, liquids, suspensions, suppositories, etc. Various administration methods include the oral route, injection route, nasal route etc. This is important as we also learn which form is suitable for the different cases pharmacists face.
We study how drugs interact with the body and the side effects they may cause. To understand this, we also do following courses:
Pharmaceutical science is a new course that has been introduced recently. It has a much smaller cohort size of 30+ students compared to pharmacy’s 180+. Pharmaceutical science students are more involved in the research side of the pharmaceutical industry and the development of new drugs. It is the study of how science and technology affects the future of drug manufacturing. I’d say this is for students who are more interested in working in labs than in hospitals.
The primary difference between pharmacy graduates and pharmaceutical science graduates is that the former are licensed to be pharmacists. This allows them to work at hospitals and polyclinics where they compound and dispense medicine. Pharmacy students also learn about research and development of drugs. Hence, pharmacy students have more options when it comes to job opportunities in the future, which is why many may opt to do pharmacy.
I have always wanted to pursue a career in the healthcare industry and the obvious choices were medicine and dentistry. However, these two courses happen to be the most sought after by students in Singapore. After doing some research, I realised that pharmacy was a viable option as well. Since I was interested to learn more about the human anatomy, pharmacy was very appealing to me because it allows one to learn more about the body as well and work in a hospital setting if you choose to go down that route.
Come to think of it, we actually take a lot of the same courses as the medicine students, such as anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. There are also interesting courses that are catered more towards pharmacy, like medicinal chemistry, drug design, etc.
I also learnt that if you go down the hospital route you can do patient counselling which is something I am interested in as it is a job where I can interact with people.
Your grasp of chemistry must be quite strong coming into pharmacy because majority of the courses require students to have a good foundation in chemistry. For example, in medicinal chemistry, we discuss chemical structures of drugs, which is very similar to organic chemistry. This is probably why the school insists that students must have done well in chemistry in order to be considered for pharmacy.
“I was surprised I got in despite the fact that I got B for Chemistry at the A levels.”
Even though H2 Biology is not a requirement of pharmacy, I personally feel it’d help if you took biology in JC because it will be easier to understand the concepts taught in a lot of modules like anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. If you took physics instead of biology in JC, you probably have to do a lot of reading online to make up for your lack of foundational knowledge of biology. This is what I have observed from my classmates who took physics.
Interpersonal skills are important for pharmacy majors. We have this module which tests us on counselling skills and our ability to talk to patients and glean information from them. For this, you need to be articulate and be able to think on your feet because I heard there will be professors who will pose as patients for our assessments. For example, they give students a hard time by acting as though they have dementia.
Also, apart from talking to patients, pharmacists interact a lot with the other workers in a hospital setting, such as doctors and nurses. The school trains students by getting students from the various healthcare faculties to work on projects together to simulate our future work environment. The school is quite particular on training us to work together and getting us acclimated to the environment. Hence, I’d say you have to keep an open mind and be ready for whatever is thrown at you in school.
Dexterity is a requirement as well because you will be compounding medicine, which means you will be preparing capsules and suspensions from scratch. It can get quite stressful as the active ingredients used in medicines are measured in milligrams so you have to be extra careful.
Based on my experience thus far, for each semester, we have 4 modules that are preallocated to us. For each of those modules, we have lectures, tutorials and lab sessions. For example, for the previous semester, out of the 4 modules, 3 of them had lab sessions. This explains why pharmacy students’ schedules can be packed from 8am to 6pm as each lab session can be about 3 hours, or longer, depending on the experiments.
From what I have observed, lab sessions focus on making the medicine like capsules and tablets and developing skills like titration and crystallization. This is covered under medicinal chemistry.
Lab sessions are quite easy to catch on to because the teachers conduct briefings on what to do before each session and there are lab guides as well. However, lab sessions where you compound medicine can be quite daunting. However, fret not as there is this senior-junior pairing which is preeminent in pharmacy. Seniors are very helpful and usually share notes with incoming juniors. Lecturers are nice as well as they ensure you understand what you have to do.
Even though we spend a lot of time in the lab, lab practicals only constitute 5% of our overall grade. Our exams are given a higher weightage instead.
I was taken aback by the practical lessons we had to take for our anatomy module, where we came into close contact with cadavers to learn more about histology. There is also an anatomy museum for histology. This museum showcases images of the smallest parts of our body like cells. We weren’t warned about this by the school before we applied to pharmacy. Hence, if you are considering pharmacy, do note that you will be dealing with cadavers as well.
My hands have become more stabilised from my lab sessions. The lab sessions train us to be more precise and confident of what we are doing and improve the stability of our hands since we work with small quantities of chemicals that are measured to the milligram.
I have also learnt how to read data and present it systematically. The lab sessions teach us how to collect and present data in the form of graphs on our computers. This teaches us some basic IT skills as well.
The mandatory internship at Year 4 exposes pharmacy students to the various areas of the pharmaceutical industry. We have a rotation system where we may start off as a community pharmacist at a local hospital. Then, we could go on to a firm to help with regulation. We could then rotate back to working at a big hospital. This would go on for about 6 months. Moreover, in order for us to get our pharmacy license, we would have to go through another 6 months of pre-registration training. This is to ensure pharmacy graduates are well prepared to face the challenges of the real world. Those who want to go into the research and marketing side of pharma also have the option of skipping out on the training period and starting work immediately after school.
Pharmacists can go into various lines of work within the pharmaceutical industry. The most common one that comes to mind would be becoming a clinical pharmacist at hospitals and polyclinics. Some may choose to go into research and development and quality assurance of drugs. There is also the option of specialising in certain diseases and age groups. For example, pharmacists are needed to tailor medicines to suit the needs of children and the elderly and monitor the dosages given to them.
Apart from pharmacists who work the counter, there are some who go on to start their own clinics to administer certain kinds of specialised drugs and provide regular checkups for their patients to monitor their progress. However, those who start such clinics usually would have done further studies in the field of pharmacy.
A lot of people say that the market is oversaturated. However, I’d like to point out that the employment rate for pharmacists is more than 90%, which is pretty good. Since we are the only pharmacy school, we can make amendments to the number of people the school takes in. Hence, it is easier for this industry to acquiesce to the market demand. Even though some might think that the introduction of pharmaceutical science causes oversaturation, aspiring pharmacists’ jobs are still protected due to the license awarded exclusively to pharmacy graduates.
I wouldn’t mind trying to work at a hospital first but I would like to move towards the regulation and marketing side of the pharmaceutical industry since I’m quite interested in economics.
Be sure of your passion because if you are coming in because you feel like you don’t have any other choice, you are going to lose out to the others. Pharmacy is full of diligent and intelligent students with a lot of passion for the subject. If you are someone who isn’t proactive and isn’t willing to put in the work to meet the demands of pharmacy, you might want to consider other majors.
“With that said, don’t come in with the mindset that everyone is smarter than you and that you’re going to lose out to the others. It is possible to do well in pharmacy if you are willing to put in the right amount of work. For this, you need to be passionate to begin with as pharmacy can be a very mentally demanding major.”
However, it is not only studies at the pharmacy. It is easy to have a work-life balance while studying pharmacy. The school also organises sports and house events which you could take part in as well! It is easy to have a balanced life but more importantly, you need to make sure you hang out with the right people. I’d recommend everyone to go for whatever pharmacy camps there are. Pharmacy has a very small student population and chances are that those students you meet at these camps would be the same people you work with for the next 4 years and beyond that in the working world as well.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the interviewees and do not reflect the official policy or position of any institution. They are also not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, class, individual or organisation.
The information contained in this website is intended to provide general guidance only. It should not be relied upon as professional advice and does not 100% guarantee admission into any course.
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