Hertfordshire school to offer innovative facilities
Next week sees the official launch of a school of pharmacy at the University of Hertfordshire. Soraya Dhillon, head of the new school, believes
that it will offer pharmacy students state-of-the-art facilities that
will prepare them for pharmacists’ future roles. The school’s
first intake of students started in September.
The university has invested heavily in the new school, one of the results
being an integrated multiprofessional clinical skills laboratory, due
to be completed next summer, which will be used by pharmacy and other
health and social care students.
The laboratory will house a paediatric and adult intensive care unit,
a four-bedded ward, a near-patient diagnostic testing area and a community
pharmacy with a robotic dispensary. The laboratory will also contain
robotic manikins (SimMan) that allow students to carry out diagnostic
assessments. The university currently has four adults, a neonate and
a child SimMan. Students will be able to take blood, carry out tests
and practise resuscitation on the robots, which will all be linked to
computers. The building will also have a 150-student lecture theatre,
which will have audio-visual links to the clinical areas allowing students
to observe practical sessions.
Another innovative feature of the course will be live video links with
local pharmacies. A pilot project is being conducted this year, which
will allow students to observe pharmacists consulting with patients. “Rather
than us bringing teacher-practitioners into the university, they will
run teaching sessions from their community pharmacies,” explained
Professor Dhillon. She added that it should be possible to link to a
number of pharmacies, each with different areas of expertise in terms
of the new contract.
Basic diagnostic skills will be covered in the new course. “This
will hopefully underpin [students’] ability to be prescribers,” Professor
Dhillon commented. In the fourth year of the MPharm, a “therapeutic
interventions in practice” course will enable students to put their
diagnostic and prescribing skills into practice during clinical placements.
Professor Dhillon is keen that a deanery
framework (PJ, 21 August
2004, p256), like that operated in medical education, is established
for pharmacy
education through collaborative working between the Department of Health,
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the schools of pharmacy. “This
model will enable us to start to build up the capacity for preregistration
places,” said Professor Dhillon. “My personal view is that
we should be a bit bolder and integrate the preregistration year into
the university. A deanery style model for undergraduate, and ultimately
postgraduate, education would allow us to do that,” she added.
Hemant Patel, President of the Society, will be guest speaker at the
launch of the school, which will take place on Wednesday 23 November. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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