Clinical pharmacy to meet the health needs of Tanzanians: Education reform through partnership across continents (2008–2011)

In 2009, the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) School of Pharmacy began to revise its BPharm curriculum for students entering in 2011. Its goal was to assure these pioneer students and their successors would be prepared to lead pharmacy practice to improve patient care and health outcomes in Tanzania. Building on its own experience and recommendations from other parts of the world, MUHAS actively engaged counterparts from the University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy. MUHAS's vision was to create a curriculum to educate students to become ‘clinical pharmacists’ with a more direct patient-care focus. This means a major expansion in activities undertaken by newly graduating pharmacists – beyond preparing and dispensing medications. With the transformation from a traditional curriculum (knowledge-based) and teaching (lectures), the new approach emphasizes interprofessional team care, clinical science content (treatment and prevention of diseases), and experiential learning opportunities from classrooms to patient-care settings. Assessments of strengths and weaknesses of previous graduates’ performance in their early employment informed curricular revision; evaluation of the competence of students and of new graduates will guide further revisions to assure preparation of effective pharmacists to lead practice in Tanzania.