Abstract

A SURVEY ON CAREER CHOICES AND EXPECTATIONS OF FINAL YEAR UNDERGRADUATE PHARMACY STUDENTS OF KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY, NEPAL AND THE IMPACT OF TWODAYS CAREER GUIDANCE PROGRAM

*Badri K. C. and Rajani Shakya

Abstract

Background: It is necessary to know the reasons students have for getting enrolled in certain educational field, what motivated them and expectations they have regarding salary and their profession during the study. There isn‟t a single research on this topic in Pharmacy education in Nepal. Thus for the first time in Nepal, we surveyed to explore the career choices and expectations of pharmacy students and assessed the impact of a two days “Career Guidance forum and my-road map contest-2015”. Methods: It is a descriptive, interventional and crosssectional study. After getting the consent from the researcher the questionnaire used in a research named "Pharmacy Undergraduate Students: Career Choices & Expectations Across A Four-Year Degree Program", Aston University, 2006 was administered to the participants of the career Guidance Forum and my-road map contest-2015. Data from the questionnaires were analyzed following coding and entry into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 15 (SPSS). Valid responses were used throughout the results section. Results: The response rate was 100%. 66.7% (n=44) of the respondents were female and 33.3% male and the mean age was 21.64 (0.957) years. All have considered pharmacy as a field with good career opportunity. First three career ambitions in pre-test was - Pharmaceutical Industry (42.2%), hospital/community split post (22.2%), and hospital/industry split post (17.8%). After the forum significant number of students changed their mind regarding the choice of pharmaceutical industry. Conclusion: This study has collected the opinion of pharmacy students on the motivations of pharmacy as a career and influences of various role-players and media to choose school of Pharmacy. The opinion of many participants on the topics like salary scale, future career ambitions and running a community Pharmacy was not as per the current scenario in pharmacy field but the post test showed change in their opinion which aligned with opinions of various experts who took the session in the forum. Thus we recommend different school of pharmacy for conducting career guidance forum like this in order to disseminate the information related to current scenario of Pharmacy sector to the students.

Keywords: Undergraduate, pharmacy students, career choices, expectation, career guidance forum, Nepal.