On Friday, pharmacists all over the world were celebrated through World Pharmacists Day. We really enjoyed reading about all the ways our colleagues in pharmacy are helping transform global health care. Pharmacists and pharmacologists have different roles, but by working together they can make a positive impact by ensuring the safe and effective development and delivery of life-changing medicines.
“This year sees our 10th World Pharmacists Day. We aim to show how pharmacists contribute to a world where everyone benefits from access to safe, effective, quality and affordable medicines and health technologies, as well as from pharmaceutical care services.”
FIP President Dominique Jordan
Pharmacists and pharmacologists also work together to develop learning and assessment products for the prescribers and pharmacists of the future. Take a look at Lynne Bollington’s recent video, for example, to see how pharmacist knowledge is central to the development of the UK PSA, for example, which uses the same platform as our own international Prescribing Skills Assessment.
How We Support Pharmacists
As the learning and assessment branch of the British Pharmacological Society, we support pharmacists by developing high quality learning and assessment resources that drive improvement in medication safety.
The Prescribing Skills Assessment is particularly valuable for pharmacists. It’s a flexible online learning and assessment tool that allows pharmacists to develop and test their skills across 8 core areas of prescribing, from prescription review to calculation skills to ADRs. It includes over 1000 questions, all written by practising experts, that put the pharmacist into specific and realistic clinical scenarios. There is a specially developed pharmacists’ version of the Prescribing Skills Assessment that includes a tailored 30-item paper for pharmacists as well as two tailored 30-item practice papers.
Schools and organisations all over the world are now taking advantage of the Prescribing Skills Assessment for pharmacists, such as Health Education and Improvement Wales, who run the Prescribing Skills Assessment for their pre-registration pharmacist trainees, and GMU PharmD students who recently completed their Prescribing Skills Assessment.
We have also developed new BPS Assessment Simulators, affordable packages of content that offer targeted skills development for pharmacists in critical areas of prescribing such as Hypertension, AMR and Deprescribing.
Get in touch to find out more about the resources we have developed for pharmacists, including the tailored version of the Prescribing Skills Assessment. You can also read some of the pharmacist stories and experiences shared on Twitter via #WorldPharmacistsDay.
