Pharmaceutical Scientists' Perspectives on Capacity Building in Pharmaceutical Sciences

With the anticipated health challenges brought by demographic and technological changes, ensuring capacity in underlying workforce in place is essential for addressing patients' needs. Therefore, a timely identification of important drivers facilitating capacity building is important for strategic decisions and workforce planning. In 2020, internationally renowned pharmaceutical scientists (N = 92), largely from the academia and pharmaceutical industry, with mostly pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences educational background were approached (through a questionnaire) for their considerations on influencing drivers to facilitate meeting current capacity in pharmaceutical sciences research. From a global view, based on the results of the questionnaire, the top drivers were better alignment with patient needs as well as strengthening education - both through continuous learning and deeper specialisation. The study also showed that capacity building is more than simply increasing the influx of graduates. Pharmaceutical sciences are being influenced by other disciplines, and we can expect more diversity in scientific background and training. Capacity building of pharmaceutical scientists should allow flexibility for rapid change driven by the clinic and need for specialised science and it should be underpinned by lifelong learning.