Practice Certificate in Independent Prescribing for Pharmacists
Postgraduate
In Leicester
Description
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Type
Postgraduate
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Location
Leicester
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Duration
6 Months
This course will help you to learn about the many facets of prescribing, including clinical, communication, and consultation skills, the psychology of prescribing, and legal and ethical considerations of prescribing.
The course is delivered over six months. However, for students with sufficient time and resources, the opportunity exists to undertake all learning and assessment within four months.
During the course, you will be expected to complete 450 hours of learning across a variety of platforms. You will attend eight compulsory face-to-face study days where you will be taught in small groups. This encourages important discussion and debate between pharmacists and lecturers, allowing for valuable reflection on the future of prescribing practice and promoting self-awareness as a non-medical prescriber.
You will also undertake the equivalent of at least 12 days (or 90 hours) of practice-based experience, under the supervision of your Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP), working towards competencies in a chosen area of practice.
To reinforce your learning, we support self-directed learning through our easy-to-use online learning platform. This format allows you to study at a time convenient to you, and encourages communication with fellow pharmacists and lecturers through discussion boards.
Facilities
Location
Start date
Start date
About this course
Be a registered pharmacist with the GPhC or the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
Have attained a 2:2 or above in Pharmacy or equivalent degree qualification
Have at least two years appropriate patient-orientated experience in a UK hospital, community or primary care setting following their pre-registration year.
Key features
Designed and delivered by a multi-disciplinary team of expert academics, experienced multi-sector pharmacists, clinicians and healthcare professionals, with a practice-based approach to learning and assessment.
Benefit from the input of experienced practitioners from the fields of pharmacy, medicine and nursing; encouraging inter-disciplinary working and ensuring your learning is relevant to current practice.
Enjoy a collegiate approach to teaching which promotes a safe, engaging and interactive environment and promotes good relationships between the academic team and students.
The course design accommodates pharmacists from all sectors and provides tools to help expand your competency following qualification.
Our industry standard teaching facilities, including purpose-built clinical skills areas, allow you to practice in a safe environment as well as simulation-based education.
Use our virtual learning environment to enhance your learning experience and promote peer support through virtual discussion boards.
Our reputation of more than 100 years of pharmacy teaching ensures we produce graduates of the highest calibre.
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This centre's achievements
All courses are up to date
The average rating is higher than 3.7
More than 50 reviews in the last 12 months
This centre has featured on Emagister for 15 years
Subjects
- Psychology
- Pharmacist
- Communication Training
- Pharmacist prescriber
- Wider skills
- Consultation Skills
- NEWS2 assessment
- Cardiovascular
- Abdominal
- Respiratory
- Examinations
- Clinical Skills
Course programme
Prescribing is complex and multifaceted and as such, our teaching focuses on the wider skills and knowledge required of a pharmacist prescriber. Some of the learning topics covered during study days and in self-directed study are:
- Communication and consultation skills
- Clinical skills including NEWS2 assessment, cardiovascular, abdominal and respiratory examinations
- Influences on prescribing
- Psychology of prescribing
- Legal and ethical aspects of prescribing
- Understanding clinical risk
- Clinical reasoning and decision making
- Using evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal
- Prescribing in a team and inter-professional education (including a half-day event with colleagues from the School of Nursing)
The course learning outcomes are follows:
1) Critically evaluate a person-centred and partnership approach to care, through self-awareness of own values and beliefs, and understanding of legal and ethical responsibilities, in order to support individuals to make risk assessed and autonomous informed decisions.
2) Demonstrate a critical understanding of, and reflection on, the prescribing role within a multi-disciplinary team, to ensure accountability and acknowledging influences on prescribing practice, including raising concerns or reporting of inappropriate or unsafe practice.
3) Apply evidence-based decision making to all prescribing decisions through a systematic understanding and critical awareness of pharmacology, therapeutics, public health and health promotion, to manage the risks and benefits of holistic patient management.
4) Ensure safe prescribing practice, and improved patient outcomes, through systematic understanding and utilisation of emerging systems, technologies and practice, and application of the principles of effective monitoring and ongoing management underpinned by appropriate governance processes and documentation that aligns with relevant legislation.
5) Apply effective history-taking, consultation, diagnostic and clinical skills to critically evaluate complex information to optimise patient care, recognising the limits of own practice and appropriate referral and support processes.
6) Demonstrate appropriate skills to uncover information from individuals who are guarded about, or unaware of their health needs, with critical reflection on their own role, and those of others, with regards to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
7) Demonstrate all of learning outcomes within the current GPhC Standards for the Education and Training of Pharmacist Independent Prescribers.
Teaching and assessment
All pharmacists will have chosen their own personal area of practice in which to develop their prescribing competency. This course does not teach therapeutics for individual scopes of practice, but instead facilitates structured independent learning for our students’ therapeutic areas of practice. The course encourages learning that will help pharmacists develop prescribing-related competencies and tools to expand therapeutic areas of practice post-qualification.
Assessment
There are three summative assessments for the course;
1) Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) – This will involve three stations, with patient actors, assessing pharmacist’s clinical and consultation skills.
2) Structured Case Report - This report is an academic piece of work with a number of components. It is linked to the pharmacist’s individual scope of practice and enables consideration of a patient’s whole care pathway.
3) Prescribing Portfolio – Pharmacists will develop a portfolio in which to log experiences, reflect on learning in practice hours and demonstrate GPhC learning outcomes and prescribing competencies.
Additional information
Practice Certificate in Independent Prescribing for Pharmacists