THE number of students entering internships is significantly lower despite the total number enrolled in all pharmacy degree programs steadily increasing since 2018, revealed the Guild's Workforce Capability Project's recent Training and Qualifications Report.
There is also a substantial difference between the student numbers enrolled in a pharmacy vocational education and training (VET) course and the completion rate, showed the report.
The highest completion rate was in 2021 at 39%, which was lower than the national average VET course completion rate of 46.1%.
According to the Australian Census 2021, the approximate size of the employed pharmacy workforce, including pharmacists and non-professional pharmacy employees, is 70,360.
This total comprises 28,297 pharmacists, 35,174 pharmacy sales assistants (working in the community setting) and 6,889 pharmacy technicians (working in the hospital setting).
However, students training to receive non-professional community and hospital pharmacy qualifications are not eligible to receive Commonwealth financial assistance to cover the cost of tuition fees and instead must seek financial assistance from their state and territory governments.
The report explained that for professional pharmacy qualifications, there are currently 20 universities in Australia offering 47 academic courses in total, which include both Bachelor's and Master's degrees.
The Guild stated that through future editions of both this report and the Career Paths report, it will seek to understand why students are not following a pharmaceutical career trajectory.
The body added this will allow it to better understand how to attract students to internships, and support them in completing and pursuing a career in pharmacy to further improve the capacity and capability of the workforce.
Factors that influence attrition and retention will be also be analysed to further understand how to better meet the needs of students during their studies. JG
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