Volume 4
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2025
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Nureen Nusrat
Nureen Nusrat
Published online: 03 December 2025
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Pharmacy worldwide has moved steadily away from a product-centered trade toward a patient-centered profession in which pharmacists interact directly with patients, contribute to prescribing decisions and give clinical advice. In keeping with this shift, the Pharmacy Council of Pakistan (PCP) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) have revised the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum over successive versions. These reforms are welcome, yet translating them into competent clinical practice within the healthcare system remains a considerable task. The updated curriculum now allocates clinical and hospital practice hours for undergraduates in real settings; however, the small number of clinical pharmacists working in the health system makes it difficult to supervise and deliver this training so that the intended outcomes can be achieved. The extent to which pharmacy schools are meaningfully integrated with community pharmacies, hospitals and manufacturing units and how far students are actually absorbed into these settings also need careful evaluation. A further concern is the heavy course load: students must complete extensive theory and laboratory hours for every subject, which can crowd out genuine participation in clinical practice. If the reforms are to produce professionally mature pharmacists equipped with clinical skills, the PCP and the HEC will need to address these structural barriers and evaluate the outcomes of the revised PharmD curriculum in a timely way.