The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7253 p815
14 June 2003

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Foundation degrees for technicians

Two schools of pharmacy in England are planning to introduce part-time foundation degrees to strengthen the developing roles of pharmacy technicians.

The University of Portsmouth is planning a three-year foundation degree in medicines management to start in September 2004. Jane Portlock, of the division of pharmacy practice at Portsmouth school of pharmacy, told The Journal that the course will be equivalent to two years of full-time study. The course is aimed at pharmacy technicians who already have a National Vocational Qualification level 3 or equivalent and who are probably working in the hospital service.

Students will spend one day a week at either the university or another academic unit, one day on a clinical placement at their place of work and three days on their normal duties. The course will consist of four units in each year. The first year will cover lifelong learning and continuing professional development, scientific principles and team working, dispensary checking and consultation skills. In the second year there will be two units each on drug action, covering pharmacology, and on medicines management, covering discharge planning and medicines history-taking. The final year will cover operational management, professional development plans, a project and optional units on, for example, audit or interprofessional approaches to care.

Ms Portlock emphasised that the foundation course is not intended as an entry route to the four-year master of pharmacy degree course. "The pharmacy degree produces scientists who are pharmacists. The foundation degree will produce more highly trained technicians."

The Portsmouth course will be run in collaboration with South East (South Coast) National Health Service Education and Training. Sarah Goodson, principal technician for pharmacy training, said that objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) will form part of the training. These will be similar to the ones used in preregistration training (see p816) but with fewer tasks to complete. Tasks to be covered include consultations, information gathering, referral of cases to pharmacists, taking medicines histories, discharge planning and assessing medicines for reuse. She said that the OSCEs and the foundation degree are part of the "skills escalator" favoured by the Department of Health in its skill mix discussions.

De Montfort University, Leicester, is also planning a foundation degree for technicians. Entry requirements to the course will be similar to those for Portsmouth.

Dr Geoff Hall, acting head of the Leicester school of pharmacy, said that students will spend around 14 days a year at People's College, Nottingham, with the rest of the teaching taking place in the workplace over three years. Subjects to be covered will include professional and scientific principles, biochemistry and pharmacology, drugs and diseases, medicines information, medicines management, and quality assurance and clinical governance. There will also be options for those wanting to specialise in, for example, production or compounding. Subject to approval by the university, the first students could start this September.

Dr Hall said that the course is not intended as an entry to the MPharm degree course. However, some of the early modules for the course are common to both. In the future, and subject to approval, it might be possible for a foundation degree student who has completed the first two years of the course, and undertaken the correct selection of modules, to be admitted to the second year of the MPharm course. Dr Hall stressed that this has not yet been agreed by any of the relevant authorities.