Pharmacy school syllabus differences, comparing USA and Korea

   In 2009, South Korea changed most of its pharmacy schools to a 2+4 program from a 4 year program.  Once students get into college, they prepare for a test that is equivalent to PCAT called PEET.  Once their grades are sufficient enough and they have gone through interviews, they are accepted into the pharmacy school. 

   The big picture of Korea’s pharmacy school syllabuses are very similar to the states.  Their schools provides variety of different subjects such as classes on cosmetics, natural material sciences, marine natural products, production management, quality control, and individualized pharmaceutics.  One distinct difference between them is the time frame of APPEs.  In America, P4 students have to go into APPEs for a year, when in Korea, you can do APPEs throughout the school if needed.  Also, P4 students in Korea must take classes in genetics, medicinal herbs, and oncology.  Herb classes are important in Korea since patients tends to rely on herbs.

   When P4 students in the states do 8 rotations for 5 weeks throughout the last year, Korean students do 10 weeks of hospital, 5 weeks of community pharmacy, and 2 weeks of medication administration.  As elective, they can either choose from research, hospital, or administration for the next 15 weeks.  However, clinical pharmacy is still a growing field for pharmacists in Korea so they don’t have variety of different rotations in a hospital.  In states, P4s have do to acute care, ambulatory care, community care, health system management, patient care, and non-patient care rotations. 

   In Korea, doctors are still considered to be a “leader” of the healthcare team.  This trend is decreasing as inter-professionalism is growing, yet the doctors have bigger voices in Korea compared to other healthcare professionals.  In states, all pharmacy schools have a program where pharmacy students get to interact with other healthcare professionals, such as SLU IPTS in STLCOP.  However, this is not yet implemented in Korean pharmacy school.  According to couple of Korean pharmacy students, if this program was available, they think it will be very beneficial for them to learn the thinking process of other healthcare professionals and listen to their opinions more carefully. 

By Erica Shin