September 2025 will bring with it a new Pharmacy degree.
We spoke to Professor Susan Matthews, Head of Pharmacy at Sheffield University about the degree. She explained that what pharmacists help with will expand. She said:
“All pharmacists will be prescribers. We need more pharmacists, pure and simple”.
South Yorkshire has a pharmacist deficit, so there are more job opportunities than elsewhere.
Considered for a while, she said: “If you talk to pharmacists in Sheffield, they have been wanting this for a long time”.
Accreditation has seven steps. The first started in 2022, where the The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) was approached.
Step two required a Head of Pharmacy, which Susan Matthews took on. Detailed course documentation was produced.
The GPhC visited in May. She said: “We were really fortunate we were approved straightaway”, so they could go on UCAS.
Submitted recently, step three meant the curriculum was written. Once approved, students can be interviewed from February 2025.
The final meeting with the GPhC is at the exam board of the first cohort of students. She said: “There is a simultaneous accreditation of the course and the graduating of those students,
“so those students can become pharmacists”.
The degree is expected to be popular. She said: “on the open day on 19th October, the lecture theatre was full.”
The department aims for 35 students, building to 80 over five years, making them a small school of pharmacy. She said: “You can get to know the students better”.
The degree will have integrated teaching. She said: “We start with the patient and end with the patient, so that everything the student learns, they know why”.
She said: “the regulator has over 50 objectives to be met”.
There will be a variety of placements throughout. She said: “all placements will be easily commutable.
“Unlike other healthcare courses, students don’t receive the NHS bursary, so we will pay for their travel.”
They will be on the main campus using labs with Chemistry, who have been ‘really welcoming’. Staff will be based on Mushroom Lane, near The Wave.
She said: “once a week, students will be at The Samuel Fox House in The Northern General Hospital all day”. This has a dispensary and consulting rooms.
Image credit: School of Allied Health Professions, Nursing and Midwifery
