Assessing the Impact of the Current Pharmacy Education in the Attitudes of Early Career Pharmacists towards Leadership and Professional Identity in Nigeria

Abstract

Background: The WHO nine-star pharmacist model as well as the Centre for the advancement of pharmacy Education (CAPE) Educational outcomes have recognised the concept of leadership as a crucial attribute for pharmacists. This emphasizes the need for pharmacy education to meet up with the goals, need, objectives and requirements of the profession. Objectives: Accordingly, the objective of our study was to investigate the impact of the current pharmacy education in the early career pharmacists towards leadership and professional identity in Nigeria. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey of early-career pharmacists across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. In this study, early-career pharmacists were referred to licensed pharmacists with five or less years of practice. Results: 580 early career pharmacists participated in the study. From the study, 65.6% of the respondents noted that the pharmacy education prepared them effectively for leadership while 79.3% of the respondents noted that pharmacy education prepared and imbibed professional identity in them. The result of this study may be due to the improved curriculum in pharmacy education in Nigeria and also a deviation towards pharmaceutical care and PharmD program which highlights leadership, direct responsibility, clinical-oriented care and managerial skills as core values. This study suggested limited mentorship program and workload/ time constraints as key barriers to display leadership roles among early career pharmacists. From this study, 82.8% of our respondents suggest that the pharmacy education curriculum need adjustment to better prepare students for leadership roles. This may be due to the shift in paradigm from pharmacist being product-oriented to becoming patient-oriented and also with the rapid advancement in cutting-edge information technology and artificial intelligence (AI), the nature of pharmacist work has changed and thus job security is likely affected. Conclusion: The findings of our study showed that leadership has been moderately incorporated into the current pharmacy education in Nigeria but there is need to improve the curriculum by introducing early mentorship program, entrepreneurship and innovation, clinical and practical experiences as well as adopting an active teaching approach in leadership as this will enable effective leadership and professional identity demonstration across all levels and fields of pharmacy practice in Nigeria.