Re-trained immigrants to alleviate shortage of pharmacists

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Nine pharmacists of Russian or Estonian origin graduated in Kuopio on Tuesday, after having participated in a competence training programme organised by the employment office of Turku and the University of Kuopio. The so-called Specima project was financed by the European Social Fund (ESF).
      It is hoped that pharmacists with immigrant backgrounds will alleviate the shortage of pharmacists in Finland.
      "The project was a great success. Typically, highly-educated immigrants have difficulties in finding work, and the government will be rapidly reimbursed for its investment in retraining, as these immigrants will pay taxes and will not need any unemployment benefits", notes Hannu-Pekka Huttunen from the employment office of Turku.
     
A total of 13 students with a Bachelor's degree or the Master's degree from a Faculty of Pharmacy outside the European Union were admitted to the training course. The students also had to have an adequate knowledge of Finnish. Three dropped out, but nine graduated on Tuesday and a tenth will do so in the near future.
      All nine immigrants had found a job already prior to graduating from the competence training.
     
Finland has been suffering from a shortage of pharmacists since the beginning of the millennium. The current shortfall is around 100, while at the end of 2002, the number of vacancies was more than 220.
      Around 300 pharmacists graduate from Finnish universities every year, but this has not been enough to fill the unoccupied jobs. Moreover, unemployed practical nurses have also been retrained to become pharmacists, but this has not helped either.
      Currently, the 800 Finnish pharmacies employ approximately 3,200 pharmacists, with the consumption of pharmaceutical products growing, and with impending retirements from the baby-boom generation worsening the labour shortfall.
     
The success of this Specima programme will be very encouraging, given that similar competency projects are in existence for other fields - including physicians, dentists, schoolteachers, engineers, and laboratory professionals - with a view to improving the chances of highly-educated immigrants getting work that matches their skills.
      Finland already faces labour shortages in certain critical areas, and the situation is not likely to improve in the short-term. All too often immigrants - for all that they are seen as one solution to this problem - have been employed in unskilled positions or ones where their specific skills are not fully exploited.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Poll: Small majority do not see immigration as solution to labour shortage in Helsinki region (4.1.2007)

Links:
  The European Social Fund (ESF)

Helsingin Sanomat