ANU Pharmacy Dept.: Excellent Study & Practical Brilliance

With the help of special learning programs in the various departments and colleges, Al-Nasser University always seeks to develop the students’ scientific and practical skills. All-inclusive training plans are prepared and implemented annually to raise the student’s qualification level and enrich the major’s practical skills.

Al-Nasser University’s Pharmacy is one of the most outstanding departments where the student can get a typical learning environment facilitated with scientific and practical aids that maximize the educational advantage.

Dr. Yasser El-Math-haji (Head of Pharmacy Department) noted to the department’s most cherished goal of providing students with the basic pharmacy knowledge, helping them indulge into the theoretical depth of the discipline, and then offering them opportunities to practice and enhance their professional skills.

The study in this department is emphatic about the practical of core subjects. Eight labs are provided for this purpose in addition to the field visits to pharmaceutical companies that further boost the students’ professional experience.

The department’s labs are equipped with the devices and substances the student needs to carry out experiments. For example, a model factory was made to simulate the pharmaceutical industry. In it, the student can produce a certain type of medicine and conduct a quality test to examine its fragility, solubility, active material, etc.

Furthermore, FMS owns an internal pharmacy that contains most of the common medicines for the seniors’ study of Pharmacology. Like any other lab, this looks like a real-life drugstore where the students can experience the tasks of arranging medicines, sorting them out by companies, reading prescriptions, storing drugs, etc.

In field visits, the students are escorted by training supervisors and received by the factory’s specialists who introduce them to the enterprise’s work mechanism. They are also given a chance to tour the factory’s sections to identify the production line of each particular medicine starting with the raw material input and ending with the product’s final form.

At a factory, the students recognize: the quality control dept. in charge of testing the materials’ specimen to ensure that they meet the specifications; the R & D dept. in charge of conducting studies on and developing the materials used to make up medicines, following up the existing products, and dealing with any arising problem; and the production section that contains solid, liquid, and cosmetics production lines; and so on.

According to Mr. Ahmed Mahoub (Director of Research & Training), many field visits were organized during the second semester for 4^th and 5^th level students to Shefaco Pharmaceuticals at 60-meter St, Pharmaceutical Co. and Global Pharma at Subaha area. The field visits took place in implementation of the department’s training program.

Abdulkhaliq El-Ouzaib (a 5^th level student) stressed that field training boosts the student’s understanding as he/she experiences in real life what has been studied in class. It also enables the student to deal with the same circumstances to cope with in actual job.

In addition, some distinctive training aspects in Pharmacy Department include sending 4th and 5th level students to hospitals or even private pharmacies for training. They are provided with the training guidebook that includes the instructions and regulations to follow by the trainee. The guidebook includes also tables that show the types of medicines, brand name and scientific formula, indications, dosage, Contradictions, contraindications, and side effects.

The students can obtain the skills necessary to practicing the pharmacist profession; they enrich their knowledge, acquire practical skills, master dealing with patients, get a chance to experience the work in pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies.

The evaluation of students is based on such measures as attendance, mid and final exams, performance in internal pharmacy, field visit reports, and the field training brief reported by the supervisor.