Introduction

Pharmaceutical exports have increased dramatically in recent years and are now Denmark’s biggest export item. This vigorous growth has generated a corresponding increase in demand for pharmacists and other graduates with a pharmaceutical background.

Although PHARMA admits 230 undergraduate students a year and the number of PhD students is high, the present student intake will barely meet the demands of Denmark’s research-intensive pharmaceutical industry.

Employment figures reflect the subsequent high demand for pharmacists. For many years, 65 per cent of pharmacy graduates have found employment in private enterprises – primarily the pharmaceutical industry, where pharmacists make up a third of industrial chemists and a quarter of all academic staff – while the remainder are employed in community pharmacies (15 per cent) and the public sector, including hospital pharmacies (20 per cent).

The rapid development Denmark is also currently undergoing in the fields of clinical pharmacy and pharmacotherapy is boosting the need in both the primary and the secondary health care sectors for pharmacists and other MSc graduates with relevant expertise.

The programme in pharmacy aims to provide a scientific platform of theoretical knowledge, ethical, critical and analytical methods, and practical skills in the pharmaceutical sciences.

The five-year programme (a three-year full-time bachelor’s programme followed by a two-year full-time MSc programme) focuses on the perception of the pharmacist as a drug specialist. Consequently, the programme primarily targets employment in the pharmaceutical sector (the pharmaceutical industry, pharmacies and hospital pharmacies) and in regulatory bodies.

Research-based teaching, subject integration and problembased learning give students the scientific background for positions in both the private and the public sectors – wherever teamwork in the biological, chemical and pharmaceutical fields is needed.

In addition to the MSc degree in pharmacy, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences offers a full-time MSc programme, the MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences, for students with bachelor’s degrees in the non-pharmaceutical disciplines of the natural sciences, healthcare or technical sciences. Graduates from this MSc programme will primarily find employment opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry, including the biotech and medical device industries.

Since 2004 PHARMA has offered two part-time master’s programmes for graduates with at least two years of relevant work experience: Master of Industrial Drug Development (MIND) and Master of Drug Management (MDM).

In 2007, for the first time the Faculty offered a third master’s programme, Master of Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs (MPRA). This programme is jointly developed and offered in collaboration with the Danish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Lif).

In Denmark, students have a large say about the content of the various study programmes. Programmes are determined by study boards composed 50/50 of teachers and students.

Students also exercise influence on the teaching itself through the student representatives on each department’s teaching committee.