Follow-up study of graduates of the UNAH Chemical Sciences and Pharmacy program: an investigation into the work and academic perspective

Abstract

This graduate follow-up study of the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences bachelor’s de-gree, applied between March and May of 2024 year, sought to investigate, through the application of a digitalized instrument, aspects of personal data, academic, labor, and updating needs infor-mation, obtaining a sample of 391 graduates. The analysis of the results highlighted that 59.34% of the participants in this study showed that they had not received any training after their degree graduation, the rest had taken other processes such as: PhDs, master’s, diplomas, among others, thus favoring the visualization of specialists in the field. 81.07% reported having a job, 5.63% have a business related to their career and 11% declared themselves unemployed, 89.94% reported that their job search after graduation was less than a year. The seven areas where the participants work professionally, ordered according to those that obtained the greatest number of responses, were: pharmacy management, pharmaceutical sales representatives, community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, health regulation, quality control, and chemical analysis. The salary range where the graduates in this study were mostly located between L 15,000 and L 20,000, with a percentage of 56.34%. The training modality in which the graduates have the greatest interest were: Specializa-tion / Master’s / Doctorate, with 49.38%, followed by seminars / courses / diplomas with 24.84%, prioritizing among the ten training topics related to the career, sorted by the highest number of responses obtained: pharmacology, pharmaceutical care, pharmacovigilance, pharmaceutical sales representatives, pharmaceutical marketing, pharmaceutical audit, health regulation, quality assu-rance, drug control, pharmaceutical legislation and good manufacturing practices of drugs. The study modality that was most preferred among the study sample was the asynchronous virtual one, with study time available on weekends. This information should be linked to the needs of graduates to plan continuing education programs offered by the Faculty of Chemical and Phar-macy of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), sciences or other academic units, for areas other than the discipline, in addition to proposing programs that strengthen the labor dimension.