NEWS
NEWS IN BRIEF ON YOUR TOES
Student views just the topic for Prescription of Excellence
to attend the recent Community Pharmacy Ball and Scottish Pharmacist Awards in Edinburgh as the firm’s guests.
Pictured are RGU Pharmacy students Ashleigh Gilfillan, Shahab Daneshgar, Ashley Duguid, Nisha Krishan and with the pre-school ‘patients’
Third year pharmacy students at Robert Gordon University (RGU) had a chance to test their skills recently when a group of pre- school children paid them a visit to take part in a simulation exercise.
Working in teams, students had to interact with a number of young children in order to develop essential skills in responding to symptoms. The six kids along with their parents or carers had been given role-play instructions and students had to find out their fictional symptoms through consultations, and give appropriate advice or medication for it.
Reflecting on her experience, pharmacy student Ashleigh Gilfillan said that it was a great way for students to familiarise themselves with situations they will most possibly will have to face later in the professional environment.
Ashleigh (20), said, “I think it is very important for us to gain experience before going into practice as the University provides a safe place to develop essential consultation skills when dealing with real life patients. We’ve never been given a task like this, but I think we have a lot to learn from this experience.”
Alyson Brown, RGU Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, said, “As a pharmacist, developing outstanding communication skills in different contexts is essential. By giving the students the opportunity to improve their skills in this way, and show them what it can be like to interact with young children in a pharmacy environment, we aim to help them prepare for what they will face in practice.”
38 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST
As Professor Rose Marie Parr looks forward to celebrating her first anniversary in post as the Scottish Government’s Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, her vision for delivering the Scottish Government’s ten year ‘Prescription of Excellence’ plan continues at a pace with pharmacists’ extended clinic roles at the centre of this vision.
As the former Director of Pharmacy for NHS Education for Scotland, Professor Parr has a widely-reported passion for education in pharmacy and life-long Learning and it is a subject clearly high on the list of pressing issues she is addressing in her new role. Morisons Solicitors, who widely represent pharmacy owners across Scotland, recently took an innovative approach of role reversal to canvas the views of pharmacy students and learn what they believe Professor Parr’s top three priorities should be in pharmacy education.
Last year, the firm launched a
competition for students at Robert Gordon and Strathclyde Universities and were clearly impressed not only by the level of interest but with the level of passion and depth of debate the students expressed in their written submissions which were judged last month.
Lucy Gannon, Partner, Morisons said, “Collaboration has become key in the sector as pharmacy professionals embrace clinical leadership in their new, integrated approach to patient care and it seemed only appropriate to find out the views of our pharmacists of the future. As is often the case, we were very impressed by the quality of debate and the enthusiasm demonstrated by the students to collaborate on this very topical subject.”
Fourth-year students Ross Dickie from Robert Gordon University and Keith Bradley from the University of Strathclyde were the selected winners of the written competition and invited
Risk to Payment Accuracy
Pharmacy Practitioner Services Scanning Centre has said that it continues to receive submissions that are inadequately packaged by contractors. There is an increase in instances where package contents have burst out of the bag or the contents of the bag have not been banded securely. This increases the risk of prescriptions becoming separated from the correct contractor
submission and therefore a risk to your payment. It also considerably increases the time to prepare the forms for scanning.
To assist customers and reduce the risk to any contractor payment, Practitioner Services are issuing the following guidance:
DON’T Overfill the bag (use 2 if necessary)
Ross identified integration, leadership and clinical excellence as his top priorities, highlighting, “As the population is ageing, we are moving towards a health system which will be increasingly constrained by financial considerations. Therefore, each member of the health care team will be required to provide an integrated service in partnership with other health care providers, patients and carers.”
Integration and leadership were also important to Keith who believes that students need to be better prepared for entering into a multidisciplinary healthcare team with more practical experience and facetime with patients. He said, “There is a need for students to have a much higher degree of exposure to pharmacy practice in the first years, if not weeks, of their undergraduate training and that these ‘on the job’ experiences are as varied in the profession which as graduates they will go on to work in. There is also a need for more diverse interprofessional learning.”
As Professor Parr reflects on her first year in post, she can rest assured that her future colleagues are well on their way to embracing the ‘Prescription for Excellence’ and may even be able to offer a word or two of worthy advice.
DON’T Place loose scripts in bags DON’T Use sticky labels, staples or paperclips DON’T Wrap a prescription form round a block/brick of prescriptions – these can be easily torn
DO Tightly secure parcel DO Secure blocks/bricks of forms with rubber bands
DO Keep form types together where possible
DO Keep invoices separate
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