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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
st
21 September 2021

pharmacy law and ethics, pharmaceutical technology and quality control, pharmaceutical marketing
and management.

Study Sample

All the pharmacy graduates passed out to date from University of Peradeniya, University of Ruhuna
and Kotelawala Defence University were taken as the sample.

Data Collection and Analysis

The questionnaire was content, and face validated by the experts in the field and pre-tested on content,

design, readability and comprehension using 10 pharmacy graduates from all the three universities,
and modifications were made as necessary and shared to all the graduates of the three universities as a

Google document using their personal email addresses. Subsequently, the responses received within a

period of month (15 June to 15 July 2021) were collected. The questionnaire consisted of 26 questions
to retrieve information on demographic data, details of the employment, evaluation of overall

perception, evaluation of the perception of shortcomings and extent of contribution towards career

opportunities. In this tool participants’ perception was assessed using a 5-point Likert scale (strongly
agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree and no opinion) and categorical variables were presented as

numbers (percentages).

Ethical Considerations

The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Review Committee of the Faculty of
Allied Health Sciences, University of Ruhuna. All the study-related procedures and data collection

were performed after obtaining informed consent from participants. Data were collected using a google
form and all answers were kept anonymous even to the research team.

Results

Total of 271 graduates of three different universities (UoP-138, UoR-79 and KDU-54) were
approached and 101 completed the questionnaire during the one-month study period. The response

rates for UoP, UoR and KDU were 41% (57/138), 38% (30/79) and 26% (14/54) respectively. Among
the total number of participants (n=101), 55% were between 26-30 years of age and the majority

(72%) were females. More than 95% agreed that it is important to have pharmacy degrees in Sri

Lanka while 70% were satisfied with the quality of pharmacy degree. Almost all the participants
believed that academic standards of the degree, international collaborations, clinical training,

laboratory practical and industrial training should be improved. Approximately 65% believed that the

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