Take a moment to look back - EPSA through time

In 1978, students from 6 countries gathered at the ANEPF France congress to discuss the upcoming European Community (EC) directives on the mutual recognition of Pharmacy diplomas and to compare studies in different countries. It soon became obvious that the work needed to be done was extensive and the students proposed an establishment of a European Sub-Committee (ESC) of the International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation (IPSF). In 1982, the ESC became an independent organisation and in 1993, the name was officially changed to EPSA. Today, EPSA represents over 100.000 pharmaceutical students from 36 countries!

Initially, the main focus of the association was the development of European pharmacy education. Soon, more projects continued to be added as the European pharmaceutical students continued to express interest in various areas. From the very beginning, EPSA aimed for successful collaboration with both student and professional partners, and the EPSA Newsletter has been published since 1979.

ESC began with one Board member, the Chairperson but as the workload grew, more positions were added. First, in 1980, the Reception Committee and the Secretary in 1981. Today, the EPSA Team consists of 30 Team Members, 9 of which comprise the Executive. The 2000/2001 mandate saw the establishment of the sub-committees to take care of specific work areas and these were replaced by the Working Committees during the 2003/2004 mandate. The Working Committees consisted of one representative from each Member Association and an elected Director. The Working Committees were abolished during the 2009/2010 mandate and Officers took over specific tasks and projects until they were renamed to Coordinators in 2012. The EPSA Team structure still continues to change but the structure of an Executive and Coordinators remains.

An association’s biggest projects are usually their annual events and the same is true for EPSA. The EPSA Congresses have been gathering the European pharmaceutical students from the very start in 1978. In 1999, the Summer University was organised for the first time and when the need for a second annual General Assembly became apparent, the Autumn Assembly was established in 2004. The EPSA event of excellence, the Annual Reception, was organised for the first time in 2010.

This is just a very concise history of EPSA. EPSA is a dynamic association that continuously changes based on its members’ preferences and the European pharmacy situation. In 2012, in order to keep track of EPSA’s history in an easily accessible and understandable way, the EPSA Compendium was created and you can go check it out for even more information on EPSA history! The most important decisions for EPSA are also being gathered in the Important Decisions Document.

EPSA members are pharmaceutical students which means that the Associations’ membership pool changes continuously. The same is true for the EPSA Team and the representatives of the EPSA Member Associations, the LSs. While this ensures constant development, it also has its drawbacks, one of them being the difficult knowledge transfer between different generations. In 2004, the first steps towards the EPSA Alumni Project were made and the Alumni continue to be a great source of background information and advice to this day. Nevertheless, the need to have a better overview of the history and development of specific EPSA projects and issues encountered with them arose as it is hard to investigate a specific project if you do not know it ever existed. The idea to create Compendium annexes was thus born – the Compendium and the Important Decisions Document would not be unnecessarily extended and made difficult to read while at the same time, documents explaining the development, unsuccessful ideas and the reasoning behind everything will exist for the incoming Team and LSs to study during their handover. Hopefully, this leads to better knowledge transfer and to learning from past mistakes to not continue to repeat the same investigations. Work on this started in the summer of 2019 and in November 2019 a Working Group was created for this purpose. Today, it consists of 28 members which are EPSA Alumni, current EPSA Team Members, LSs and EPSA members.

In addition to writing the history of EPSA events, activities, membership, accomplishment and issues, the Working Group is updating the EPSA Archives and will prepare some advice for future EPSA generations. For more information on what work in the group is like and the history of EPSA itself, visit the EPSA Blog follow the EPSA Social Media, subscribe to the Monthly Dose and as soon as possible again, come meet the other EPSA members and Alumni at EPSA Events! We are counting on you to continue to make EPSA grow in the future as EPSA is its members and always has been, so what are you waiting for?

Just some example of EPSA projects’ development through the years: