Postgraduate education in pharmacy in Turkey today and future

Postgraduate education in Turkey started with the establishment of the School of Pharmacy, which was established before the Republic period. However, the first doctorate thesis was done in the Istanbul University of pharmacy faculties started. In this study, the distribution of graduates and current student numbers in faculties, programs and universities in Turkey in the field of pharmacy will be determined and the academic staff requirements of pharmacy faculties will be discussed. The material for this study comprises of the data from health sciences institutes in Turkey that provide postgraduate education about pharmacy and the distributions of current academic staff obtained from Faculties of Pharmacy. To date, the most postgraduate education has been provided by the Ankara University of Faculty of Pharmacy and the faculty with the highest number of postgraduate students is the Marmara University of Faculty of Pharmacy as of 2016. The program with the highest number of postgraduate education is Pharmaceutical Chemistry while the Department of Pharmacognosy has the highest number of students at present. While the number of postgraduate students in the field of pharmacy was 763 in 2007, today it has reached 3608. When considering the current distribution of academic staff it is evident that there is an urgent need to train academic staff in newly opened faculties of pharmacy and those to be opened. Considering that 9500 pharmacists in Turkey are expected to increase in 2023, it may be advisable not to open new pharmacy faculties, to open new graduate programs specifically needed in the pharmacy faculties of universities, and to take measures to encourage the quality of existing post-graduate education programs.