College of Pharmacy, GMU receives ACPE Certification for its Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program making it the first internationally certified entry-to-practice PharmD program in UAE. The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) Board of Directors reviewed the PharmD degree program of GMU College of Pharmacy, for purposes of granting Certification at its June 19 – 22, 2019 meeting. All faculty participated actively in the rigorous process of preparing Self-Study Report, Site Visit, and supplementary reports. The PharmD program is fully accredited by Commission for Academic Accreditation of the Ministry of Education, UAE in 2018.
The PharmD program underwent substantive changes in 2017 – 2018 to modernize the curriculum and introduce integration, professional skills courses, scholarly pathway, and extended hours of experiential education. The ACPE certification process further enhanced the quality of the program. Having 200 credit hours and the use of 3 summers, the PharmD program is now comparable to accelerated entry-to-practice US PharmD programs preparing graduates for clinical pharmacy practice and research.
The Ministry of Health & Prevention, UAE currently accepts the experiential education in the final year of our PharmD program as pre-licensure training. Therefore, GMU PharmD students are eligible to obtain the pharmacist license right after graduation. As per our data, the success rate in pharmacist licensure examination in UAE by GMU PharmD students is 100% on first attempt.
Chancellor Prof. Hossam Hamdy and Vice-Chancellor Academic Prof. Manda Venkatramana of GMU joined Dean Prof. Sherief Khalifa and the faculty member to celebrate the prestigious ACPE certification.
Dean Khalifa said, the institutional and programmatic transformation that happened in the College and the PharmD program is a step in the right direction. Due to these changes, we are attracting and retaining high quality faculty and the best and brightest students. It is a privilege for all of us, faculty and students to be part of a college and a program that is ACPE certified. Our mission of continuous quality improvement keeps us always on the lookout for better ways to educate our students. This is part of our responsibility to produce pharmacists who can better serve their patients in UAE and anywhere in the world.