Celebrating Pharmacists

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.

 

 
 

 

GMU PharmD students complete Prescribing Skills Assessment

We are pleased to share this press release from Gulf Medical University.

Gulf Medical University PharmD students undertake Prescribing Skills training and assessment in pursuit of “Patient Safety”

Pharmacy professionals play a vital role in delivering care and helping patients maintain and improve their health, safety and wellbeing. Patients and the public have a right to be prescribed safe and effective medications. Historically, pharmacist contribution to medication safety was focused on dispensing, Now, their roles have expanded as medication therapy has increased in complexity. While pharmacists have contributed to patient safety over the years as part of their many job-related responsibilities, they now recognize and embrace their unique training, which positions them to greatly impact patient safety through the global evaluation and improvement of medication safety processes.

For the first time in the Middle East region, GMU pharmacy students are undergoing training to enhance medication safety at the individual patient level through medication management skills, monitor outcomes and initiate efforts to mitigate drug-related outcomes that may cause harm. They participated in a yearlong training program during their Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) and completed a prescribing skills assessment. This was enabled by an academic collaboration between the British Pharmacological Society Assessment and GMU which resulted in a benchmarking exercise for GMU pharmacy education outcomes including prescribing skills against international standards. 

Dr. Sherief Khalifa, Vice Chancellor for Quality & Global Engagement and Dean College of Pharmacy commented:

“We are proud of our partnership with the British Pharmacological Society Assessment. Through this partnership, our pharmacy graduates are enhancing their prescribing skills which reflects directly on patient medication safety.”

Dr. Sherief Khalifa

Contact the BPS Assessment team for more information on running the Prescribing Skills Assessment within your own institution.

 
 
 

 

UNSW Medicine delivers successful PSA remote sitting

We’ve been working with institutions all over the world throughout to help them deliver important education to their medical and pharmacy students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, one institution shares their experience of delivering the PSA remotely.

The University of South Wales in Sydney, Australia have been running the Prescribing Skills Assessment as a formative and mandatory assessment for their final year medical students since 2017. This year, the assessment was successfully conducted remotely, with over 280 students completing the exam using their own devices at home or an alternative suitable venue.

“Thank you to the team BPS Assessment Team and UNSW Medicine for enabling medical students to have the opportunity to sit the PSA exam remotely and safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

UNSW Medicine

Read more about the success of their remote sittings below, or contact us for more information on running the Prescribing Skills Assessment in your own institution.

Read the full story from UNSW