Good Manufacturing Practice and Technology

krinklez

Hey,
I'm considering taking this course in CIT, I'm just wondering has anyone else done it before, can they offer any advice/opinion on it please?

tibuk

Doesn't look impressive, look on the modules available , there should be more subjects related to the chemistry, automation etc, not a basic stuff. Maybe someone that was actually doing this will tell you more.

krinklez

Thanks tibuk, anyone else here that has done this course?

interestedman

I havent done it, i just finished applied physics and instrumentation as it happens, but i have talked to engineers in pharma companies around cork who had little good to say about the course. In one or two engineers opinions the people they knew who did the course didnt achieve much in terms of career development.

Just something to consider. Id say you really should talk to someone who did it thought.

krinklez

Thanks interestedman, some food for thought there. I rang the course co-ordinator and she told me the course has a pretty good record for employability so it's hard to know what to believe! Was there any particular fault people had about it do you know at all?

interestedman

The one thing I would point out is that the course is an "accelerated technician course". I suspect this means the rate of work would be alot faster than you might be used to (not meant as a reflection on you). For example if, like me, you are just finished a previous course and looking to fill your time until the labour market picks up by doing another course, it is worth remembering that they call it an accelerated course for a reason. Perhaps what they mean is that the content gets straight into the heart of the industry and does not give much time to tangential topics like degree courses do for a lot of the earlier years.

The question to ask yourself is what job do you want to do in the industry. If you want to use this course as a means of getting into the pharmaceutical industry with an existing degree you may have in a discipline not usually associated with the industry, then Id say this could be a very good course for you. You might not use it directly, but it would easily get you in the door of many of the pharma companies around the country.

If however, you want to use this degree on its own, that is to say, on its own merit, without any other qualifications, and you want to use it to get your first employment in the pharma industry, then I expect you would need to do the add on degree before it would be enough to get you employment.

So if you have a primary degree already and are looking to upskill for the pharma industry, you could be on a winner, but you should look at exactly what type of job you can get when you are finished. There are alot of validation and quality jobs in the industry, even now, but they are for candidates with the right qualifications. Might be worth looking at the job specifications of the jobs you want, and looking at the qualifications the employers are quoting.

If you are aiming for an operators job, then this could also be a good course as it seems to familiarize students with terms and technology, the actual particulars of most jobs in that area of the industry would be given to you by on the job training.


As for your question, no idea what misgiving they had exactly, but I will point out they were people already in full time employment in the industry. if you are trying to get to that position, you might find it much more useful.

Best of luck with the choices. It does look like one of the better courses of its type (duration and qualification) in CIT at the moment.

krinklez

Thanks for such an in-depth reply Interested! I spoke briefly to the course secretary and she said the course is six months work placement so that leaves a full year of academic study, which sounds alright to me, like you said, a lot of subjects you study in the early stages of a degree are tangental anyway.

I do have a degree, but in a completely unrelated discipline (media communications) and am basically looking to possibly start over careerwise, and the pharma sector looks interesting enough. While I don't consider the course to the the be all and end all, I'm just looking for something that would get me in the door and then hopefully I could train/upskill from there. I don't know how realistic a goal that is, I have yet to find someone that studied the course!

I thought this kind of thing would get earier as I got older but I'm more confused not with what to do with myself than I was in school!

oconnb3

hi lads thinking of doing the gmp& technology course, working in the medical device industry at the moment on contract, hoping to get something more on my cv ,i have no other qualitifications working in building 25yrs now 2yrs in medical devices. 4 yrs on have you done the course? was it useful?