As a PMC Year 1 Student, there have been many occasions when professors have questioned me [and my classmates] on why Pharmacy is a profession. Often, most of us avert our gaze from the professors, unsure about the answer. We don’t want to be called upon to give an answer – why?

Perhaps the seeming reluctance to answer that question is that we have problems defining what professionalism is. Personally, this uncertainty surely translates into a need for self-examination. In 4 years time, we will be graduating as pharmacists, but as professionals?

Instead to alluding to what common perception of ‘professionalism’ is, we should endeavour to define it for ourselves. AACP Council of Deans and APhA Academy of Students of Pharmacy suggest that ‘professionalism’ is the active demonstration of the following traits[1]:

1. Prolonged specialized training in a body of abstract knowledge

2. A service orientation

3. An ideology based on the original faith professed by members

4. An ethic that is binding on the practitioners

5. A body of knowledge unique to the members

6. A set of skills that forms the technique of the profession

7. A guild of those entitled to practice the profession

8. Authority granted by society in the form of licensure/ certification

9. A recognized setting where the profession is practiced

10. A theory of societal benefits derived from the ideology

Wishing one and all a Happy Lunar New Year. Let’s bid farewell to the year of the pig and welcome the year of the rat with open arms. May all your hopes and dreams come true this year. All the best everyone!

Regards,

47th NUSPS Executive Committee