Career and Educational Preferences among Iranian Pharmacy Students

Background: Precise planning and providing appropriate career field for pharmacists is depended on recognition of their interests and their educational and career goals. This study was designed to identify career and educational goals and preferences of pharmacy students and the effective factors on them.
Methods: The study was performed on students of 3rd, 4th and 5th year of pharmacy school, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. Subjects were answered to predesigned questionnaire containing questions about their demographic characteristics and their educational and career goals and preferences.  Impact of demographic characteristics on the responses was also statistically analyzed.
Results: Of the 150 pharmacy students as the target, 65 (43%) subjects responded to the questionnaires. Of these, 36 respondents (55.4%) were men. Mean (SD) age of the respondents was 22.0 (1.1). Most of the respondents (n = 44, 67.7%) stated that after achieving PharmD degree, they are not intended to study in postgraduate levels. Among the group who intended to study in pharmacy residencies, pharmaceutical sciences was the most popular field. Twenty-eight respondents (43 %) stated that research after graduation is one of their preferences. In terms of employment, most respondents (87.7%) preferred to work in the private sector and most of them (80%) predicted a monthly income of between 400 and 4000 dollars for themselves. There was no relationship between age and gender with intention for study in pharmacy residency and work in public sector. However, there was a significant relationship between gender and predicted income as men predicted higher incomes for themselves (P=0.03).
Conclusion: Policy makers of medical education need to identify students’ interests and goals in order to appropriately guide them during academic years. Exploring pharmacy students’ educational and career interests in other parts of the country and with a larger sample size, and developing the essential infrastructures for pharmacists to provide more specialized services seem inevitable.