For the second consecutive year the Malta Institute of Management has supported the Malta Pharmaceutical Students Association in the organisation of an international conference that brings together pharmacy students from all over Europe.

During the conference, MIM training chairman Reuben Buttigieg emphasised the importance of management skills and soft skills in each and every profession. One may be a great accountant, an excellent architect or a marvellous doctor, he said, but might lack the necessary management skills to ensure that one’s firm, business or clinic are run in an efficient and effective manner. Unfortunately, various education systems around Europe have failed to recognised this.

The MIM, together with its partners in the European Management Association, ensure that professionals, among others, are kept abreast of the latest management theories and practices.

The health sector has become one of the main pillars of our economy. Development of the pharmaceutical industry in Malta over recent years has gone beyond expectations, he said, to the extent that we may have been caught unprepared as far as having the necessary resources to serve the industry is concerned. The MIM is continuously carrying out training needs analysis within and in collaboration with the industry. The constant cry is that, within this industry Malta has fantastic professionals but they lack the necessary management and soft skills. Customer Care, consumer behaviour, marketing, talent management, finance – to mention a few – are fundamental in any profession, said Mr Buttigieg.

It is in the light of this that this year the MIM has launched the pilot of a course entitled Marketing within the Pharmaceutical industry, he said