Supplementary prescribing will be at the heart of new Medway school of pharmacy degree course
Supplementary prescribing will be at the centre of the pharmacy degree course at the new Medway school of pharmacy.
Clare Mackie: students will capture the experience of prescribing
as they train |
Clare Mackie, the recently appointed head of school (PJ, 6 December 2003,
p766), said that
differential diagnosis would be incorporated within problem-based workshops
from the first year. “We are going to integrate
prescribing within the undergraduate programme. Never before have we
had the opportunity to rationalise therapy as prescribers. What we want
to do is to capture for students that experience.”
The new Medway school of pharmacy, a joint venture between the universities
of Kent and Greenwich, was officially opened last week. The school’s
first intake of 50 students will start the master of pharmacy (MPharm)
course in September this year, with total student numbers at the Medway
school expected to rise to over 500 by 2010.
Professor Mackie told The Journal that developing the course
from scratch has allowed an innovative approach. The course will involve
problem-based
learning. “In the pharmacy practice area, we do not plan to give
any lectures at all — we plan to make it all small group work,
which will be problem based.” The school is also planning to incorporate
interprofessional working within the course. It is currently in discussion
with the school of nursing, which will open at Medway next summer, about
the possibility of a shared curriculum. “Nurses and pharmacists
will be supplementary prescribers. What we are looking to do is to see
where we can get some synergy, not just teach the two courses together
but look to see how we can develop interprofessional working,” explained
Professor Mackie.
Nine local primary care trusts and four hospital trusts are already committed
to providing practice placements for pharmacy students throughout the
four-year course. In addition, a feature of the course at Medway is that,
during the third year, students will spend a whole 12-week term undertaking
a practice placement. “Students will be gathering their own portfolio
of evidence and competencies,” said Professor Mackie.
The launch of the school was marked by an inaugural lecture given by
Dr Annette Doherty, senior vice-president for global research and development,
Pfizer, entitled “Drug design: the real story”. Pfizer has
contributed £500,000 towards the establishment of the Medway school
of pharmacy. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal