EPSA Advocacy Initiatives

EPSA aims to collaborate with professional and students’ organisations to showcase the current state of European pharmaceutical students and to represent their voice to stakeholders throughout Europe.

EPSA has been present in Brussels actively for more than a decade. This year we are represented in Brussels by 8 EPSA Team members who work part-time at seven internships-providers. These internship organisations include PGEU (Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union), EAHP (European Association of Hospital Pharmacists), AESGP (Association of the European Self-care Industry), Medicines for Europe, EFPIA (European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations), SIOPE (the European Society for Paediatric Oncology) and DIA (Drug Information Agency). With these EPSA Team members in Brussels, EPSA is represented externally at different events, particularly those of European institutions and different stakeholders. This enables EPSA to represent the voice of over 100,000 European pharmaceutical students on matters that are interesting and vital to them.

EPSA has established Educational and Professional Affairs Advocacy Platform where representatives of EPSA Member Associations express their opinions, steer EPSA’s future directions and exchange good practices among each other. The Platform currently has 50 Representatives across Europe. EPSA has thus created a Policy Newsletter which covers European and national developments that are related to EPSA students, news from EPSA Team members present in Brussels and sharing advocacy initiatives of EPSA Member Associations.

Ending 2018 with a release of EPSA Survey Report on Obstacles in Student Mobility, EPSA has been focusing on areas where European pharmaceutical students are confronted with many more obstacles compared to students of other studies in Europe. That has led EPSA to collaborate with other associations which have as a core focus mobility and advocate for it. EPSA has established great collaboration with ESN (Erasmus Student Network) with which we recently released a joint EPSA-ESN position on obstacles in student mobility.

Additionally, on the field of education, EPSA has been active in the field of Interprofessional Education (IPE), its current inclusion and lack of it within the curricula and training of healthcare students. EPSA carried out the survey on IPE during the summer of 2019 with almost 500 responses from 32 European countries. In November 2019, EPSA released IPE Report where we showcased the current status of IPE in higher education of pharmaceutical studies. EPSA plans to do the joint work together with EHSAS (the European Healthcare Students’ Associations’ Summit) on the topic by releasing a joint policy document. Furthermore, EPSA was co-organiser of ‘Implementation of One Health in undergraduate education’ in collaboration with professional organisations representing community pharmacists (PGEU), dentists (CED), medical doctors (CPME), and veterinarians (FVE).

In April 2019 EPSA released a Statement of Opinion on eHealth and Digital Skills that was a follow from EPSA Annual Reception 2019. With this, EPSA acknowledged the importance of incorporating the new developments in technology into healthcare and education and summed up the opinion of European pharmaceutical students towards digitalisation. The main outcomes were that current students and recent graduates feel unprepared in terms of digital skills and that eHealth and digital education are missing in the European pharmaceutical curricula. Following this, in September 2019 EPSA released a Position Paper on the topic of eHealth and Digital Skills. This policy document discusses in detail topics like the current situation of digitalisation in healthcare, students’ assessment of their knowledge and attitude towards eHealth and digital skills, the impact of eHealth on patient outcomes and the future of the pharmaceutical curricula and education. The Position is based on a Survey conducted by EPSA in the Autumn of 2017 which collected 587 responses from pharmaceutical students across Europe. One of the major outcomes from the Survey showed that almost 63% of the respondents believe their digital skills are (below) average.

EPSA also engaged in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) highlighting the importance of it by participating in a public health campaign on AMR and by releasing a joint EHSAS Press Release on European Antibiotic Awareness Day (EAAD) on the topic.

The Press Release highlighted the problem of AMR as one of the main issues that healthcare is currently facing. EHSAS has set the goal to tackle AMR through its activities and encourages students from different professions to improve the knowledge on the topic through collaboration.

EPSA also worked on knowledge and attitudes on vaccination of Young Healthcare Professionals together with MSD. Hereby we evaluated the knowledge of 501 European pharmaceutical students where we assessed that AMR is mostly missing in the curricula in regards to vaccination, as well as that there is a big difference between Eastern and Western parts of Europe in regards to attitude towards pharmacist-delivered vaccination.

EPSA has been a strong advocate for European pharmaceutical students on topics of their interest and will continue to do so in the future!