Career choices after Nursing & Pharmacy courses

By Dr. Meenakshi Dhanawat

Gone are the days when parents wanted their children to focus only on becoming doctors. The new age has brought new careers and Nursing and Pharmacy are equally rewarding careers as being a doctor! In fact, Nursing and Pharmacy are seen as evergreen industries.

Let us first tell you about the courses and study programs related to Nursing and their employability quotient. The enormous healthcare industry has given rise to high paying salaries. Nursing career has added various options for a candidate to become a certified Nurse Anesthetist, Nurse – Midwife. Nurses are generalists who need to study and know drugs, but also administer them. Nursing not only helps people in need, but the shortage of nurses in the industry also helps drive up their salaries. Study programs in Nursing opens up a gamut of opportunities. There are various fields that can be tried - labor and delivery, OR, ER, inpatient nursing, outpatient nursing etc. Also, if one is unhappy in one department of nursing you can move to another field and learn new skills in that department.

The Nursing Programmes at leading universities of India and the world offer students a unique opportunity to experience state-of-the-art facilities and equipment that have been designed, in conjunction with the healthcare sector, to mirror the working environment in actual hospitals. Most of the colleges and universities that offer nursing courses also give their students the opportunity to visit centers of excellence in such areas as Cardiac Care, Burns, Neurology and Palliative Care. Upon successful completion of such course, the students studying in India also get a chance to be a part of Overseas Nurse Training Programme leading to professional registration in foreign countries like the UK.  All these courses will undoubtedly enhance international employability because nursing as a career has acquired global importance and the best hospitals and healthcare systems of the world are in dire need of more and more nurses that are trained in sync with global standards and expectations.

The demand for internationally trained nurses has been increasing exponentially for last so many years, and many Indian girls have immigrated abroad on the basis of their nursing degrees. So, in all honesty, Nursing is the course that can give you a chance to live and carve your career in the best cities of the world. The icing on the cake is the fact that nurses get paid exceptionally well at the global level. So when you do a course in nursing from any leading college or university of India, you are actually getting ready to shine at the global level and live your dream of enjoying a quality life abroad.

But the most important thing is to choose the best college for your nursing degree programmes. It is better to opt for a college or university that offers globally recognized study programs because the passing out students would then get exposure to different healthcare systems in the developed as well as the developing countries. There is an increasing demand to include contemporary nursing practice in nursing courses. So an expert advice for students keen to build their career in nursing is to select the college and the study program after proper research. Also consider the accreditation status of the program as well as NIRF Ranking when shortlisting a suitable Institute/University.

Increasing importance of Pharmacy courses

With the growth of Pharma industries, there is a need for qualified managers with Pharma/Science background with administrative skills. As a pharmacist, there are opportunities in fields like hospital pharmacy, nuclear pharmacy, retail pharmacy, and compounding pharmacy, retail pharmacy. With the rise of hospitals has opened up opportunities for admin jobs with HR specifically but what needs to be noted is that very few B-Schools or universities are providing/exploiting these opportunities in the segment of pharmacy.

Also, it gives them a gamut of opportunities for Internship/Placements in the campus itself. Choosing a Pharmacy (BPharma/MPharma) course is an easy decision but what is difficult is to choose the college or university. One should select a college that has tie-ups/collaborations with Hospitals/Pharma Industry. It is important to note that this course requires to be taught with due diligence and the quality of teaching and mentorship should also be excellent.

In general, most of the newer pharmacy schools and colleges today do not possess high quality educators, but some leading private colleges and universities stand distinguishable from the crowd owing to their expert faculty, state-of-the-art infrastructure and industry collaborations. The students are hereby advised to check out the facilities and infrastructure at the campus, enquire whether the curriculum is globally accepted, select a college that has highly trained and professional faculty with industry knowledge and also holds annual meets with industry leaders from across the globe. A good pharmacy college can assure the students placements in top MNCs of the world.

About the Author:

Dr. Meenakshi Dhanawat

Dr. Meenakshi Dhanawat is currently working as Associate Professor in the department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, MM College of Pharmacy, MMDU, Mullana.

Dr Meenakshi holds an MS degree in Pharma from NIPER-Mohali and PhD from IIT-BHU, Varanasi. She has 11.5 years of teaching and research experience. She has attended several national and international conferences in India and abroad and is the recipient of the travelship award in DDD section of AAPS-2010, National Biotechnology Conference, California, USA. She has 23 publications to her credit.