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• Undergraduate study:
• Courses
• Order a prospectus
• How to apply
• Information for applicants
• Why choose Kingston University
• Disability and mental health support
• Accommodation
• Undergraduate fees
• Fees, funding and payments
• Access, participation and inclusion

Effective Decision Making for Pharmacy Practice

• Module code: PY7020
• Year: 2018/9
• Level: 7
• Credits: 30
• Pre-requisites: None
• Co-requisites: None

Summary

This module is a core module for the MPharm degree. It will draw together a number of themes that have developed over the previous 3 years in order to prepare you for practice as a preregistration trainee and a future pharmacist, in all areas of practice. The aim of the module is to enable you to become a pharmacist who can make decisions when faced with a scenario, even if all the necessary information is not available, based on the skills and competences gained throughout the MPharm programme as well as your knowledge. The module also aims to enable you apply the knowledge you gained through your MPharm course in a safe and effective manner for patient care. Nearly 30% of the teaching time is spent in practicals and workshops to emphasise these concepts.

Aims

• To demonstrate that students have the ability to apply their knowledge of clinical, legal, ethical and professional elements of pharmacy to the safe and effective care of patients.
• To further build the skills that the students will need for professional practice e.g. decision making, minimising dispensing errors, continual professional development, independent prescribing decisions, clinical testing in the community and decision of what to do, calculating complex dosing regimens, etc.
• To fully understand research ethics, application of statistics to research, audits, critical appraisal and the use of evidence to answer queries.
• To further understand the role of pharmacist in public health in relation to vascular, sexual diseases, cancer etc.,
• To study further health economics and the processes required for healthcare funding
• To further explore the role of pharmacist as part of the health-care team and recent developments in pharmacy and prepare students for their preregistration year.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

• Demonstrate an ability to make effective decisions in relation to medication reviews, pharmacoeconomics, prescribing and ability to support decision made by effective use of reference sources and evidence-based guidelines.
• Demonstrate an ability to dispense, check and endorse dispensed items, counsel patients accurately, perform pharmaceutical calculations correctly and provide appropriate advice when responding to symptoms and promoting public health
• Evaluate and critically appraise a range of scientific, social and health studies relevant to pharmacy and understand the role of pharmacist in practice research
• Demonstrate and apply knowledge and understanding of the GPhC standards for pharmacy professionals and judge some legal, ethical, and professional dilemmas and reach a decision that can be justified
• Show detailed understanding of the changing role of pharmacists in the UK as part of the healthcare team and demonstrate engagement in Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
• Have up-to-date knowledge of any changes in the pharmacy profession whether in relation to legal, ethical or best practice in light of recent health challenges or updates from the GPhC.

Curriculum content

• The legal and ethical dimensions of pharmacy, for example, negligence, duty of care, rights.
• The professional dimensions of pharmacy, continuing professional development, continuing education, professional audit, risk management, clinical governance.
• Decision making and professional judgement: the dispensing process, dealing with prescribing errors, minimising dispensing errors.
• Concept of patient safety and how it needs to be embedded in day-to-day practice
• Human rights, bioethics, consent to treatment, mental health, contraception, euthanasia.
• Responding to various symptoms in the community especially based on recently deregulated medicines, where there is RPS good practice guidance, eg. orlistat, chloramphenicol, etc.
• Improving health by supporting secondary prevention in the form of diagnostic testing such as blood pressure monitoring, cholesterol testing and early detection of diseases eg. cancer. Diagnostic skills to support new pharmacy roles
• Public health and role of pharmacist.
• Health psychology and pharmacy and behavioural change models.
• Motivational interviewing and consultation skills
• Evaluation of pharmacy services in community and hospital; professional audit, root cause analysis, etc.
• Social aspects of pharmacy and the concept of concordance, adherence, etc.
• Approaches to measuring health: scoring systems; QALYs, SF36, disease specific scoring systems.
• Research ethics, application of statistics to research.
• Hierarchy of evidence, critical appraisal and medicine information.
• Health economic and pharmacoeconomic studies including the concepts of opportunity cost, cost benefit, cost effectiveness and cost utility analysis.
• Formularies - their basis and use.
• Current issues in pharmacy practice and recent changes in pharmacy law or professional requirements.
• Services offered by pharmacists eg. Medication reviews, independent prescribing, health checks, etc. and decision making required to run such services
• Use of cardiovascular risk calculators.
• Recognising adverse drug reactions, drug interactions and counselling patients appropriately.
• Decision making when responding to symptoms and promoting public health.
• Use of multiple dosage regimen and performing calculations related to these.
• Pharmaceutical calculations in general and specific groups eg. paediatrics.
• Dispensing of medicines
• Medicine management in practice, eg. medicine reconciliation, medication reviews, etc.
• Polypharmacy and care of the elderly.
• Innovation in pharmacy practice to optimise care, eg. use of telecare and mobile health.
• Placement in a simulated healthcare setting.
• Structure and prerequisites of the GPhC registration assessment.

Teaching and learning strategy

Lectures will be given to provide information on topics and guide students to directed reading. Workshops and tutorials will be used to discuss and present relevant material, to further develop communication skills and to enhance student-student and student-instructor interaction. Problem-based learning will be used in workshops to facilitate application of knowledge to real-life situations and assess student understanding. Practical experiments will be lab based and will require analysis and decision making.

Students undertake a one day simulation placement with patient actors alongside nursing students where working together deal with and solve a range of therapeutic challenges.

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Assessment strategy

Summative assessment is through: A three hour end of module examination which will consist of 3 sections; Section A; MCQs, SBAs and EMQs, section B; a range of short answer questions and section C; long answer question.  This exam is worth 50% of the module.

The module will also be assessed through coursework with a PBL public health assignment  worth 30%, which will include the design and delivery of a public health campaign, as part of the campaign; students are to produce evidence-based posts and videos for a social media page, producing a group poster outlining how by delivering the campaign they demonstrate the new pharmacist standards as set out by the GPhC and produce a short presentation critically appraising the role of pharmacist in the public health topic they are promoting. This PBL assignment also gives the students the opportunity to demonstrate that they are engaged with Continuing Professional Development.

A range of formative assessments undertaken both in-class (workshop and practical) and during independent study, of relatively short duration will be set periodically on content determined by the module leader. This will provide regular and detailed feedback to students so that they can develop and awareness of their rate and level of progress and of their strengths and weaknesses.

The module will also be assessed through an in module assessment, in the form of an in class test. This assessment will resemble in structure and content the GPhC registration assessment. It will consist of two sections, one calculation and the other consisting of SBA and EMQ. The calculations section feeds forward to the synoptic calculations assessment. This is worth 20% of the module.

Students in MPharm Level 7 undertake a synoptic OSCE (practical exam) which assesses their ability to demonstrate that they practice as a future pharmacist in a safe and effective manner as well as demonstrating show and undertake effective clinical decision making related to practice issues. The formative assessments and summative in module assessment and public health assignment feed forward and should prepare the students for this OSCE assessment.

Students in MPharm Level 7 also undertake a synoptic calculation assessment. The teaching in this module emphasises calculation ability and in association with the calculations section of the in module assessment will feed forward and should prepare the students for this calculations assessment. The in module assessment has a whole section of calculation, students will receive feedback post this test so that they can reflect and remedy their performance for the synoptic calculation assessment.

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Elements of Assessment

Achieving a pass

It is a requirement that the elements of assessment are passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

Besides the links listed below, students will be asked to join the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as membership is free and joining the RPS will allow them to have access to the new MEP (online) and many of the required documents listed in the links below.

• NICE
• Department of Health
  
• Pharmaceutial Services Negotiating Committee
  
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society
  
• General Pharmaceutical Council
  
• British National Formulary, latest edition. Pharmaceutical Press. ISBN 9780853697367 (will change as new editions are printed).
• Introduction to Pharmaceutical Calculations (3^rd Ed), Rees, Smith and Smith, Pharmaceutical Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0853699606
• Medicines, Ethics and Practice. Latest edition, Pharmaceutical Press. ISBN:9780853697442
• Health promotion for pharmacists (2^nd Ed), Blenkinsopp, Panton and Anderson. Oxford University press (2000). ISBN 9780192630445
• Foundations for Health Promotion (Public Health and Health Promotion) (3^rd Ed), Naido and Wills. Bailliere Tindall (2009). ISBN 978-0702029653
• Symptoms in the Pharmacy: A Guide to the Management of Common Illness (6^th Ed). Blenkinsopp, Paxton and Blenkinsopp. Blackwell Publishing (2008). ISBN 978-1405180795
• Minor illness or major disease (5th Ed). Edwards and Stillman. Pharmaceutical Press (2012). ISBN 978-0853699613
• Evidence Based Practice. C. Bond, Pharmaceutical Press (2000) ISBN: 9780853694366
• Dale and Appelbe's Pharmacy Law and Ethics (9^th Ed), Appelbe and Wingfield. Pharmaceutical Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0853698272
• Pathology and therapeutics for pharmacists: A basis for clinical practice (3^rd Ed), Greene and Harris. Pharmaceutical Press, (2008). ISBN 978 0 85369 6902
• Complementary and alternative medicines (2^nd Ed), Steven B Kayne. Pharmaceutical Press (2008). ISBN 0853697639
• The Drug Tariff, latest edition (also on the website)
• The NPA Guide to the Drug Tariff and NHS Dispensing for England and Wales, August 2003, National Pharmaceutical Association
• A guide to clinical Audit, Ashmore, Chanter and Johnson. 
• Standards of conduct, ethics and performance
• Guidance for Responsible Pharmacists
• Standards for continuing professional development
• Standards for pharmacy owners and superintendent pharmacists of retail pharmacy businesses
• Guidance for owners and superintendent pharmacists who employ responsible pharmacists
• Guidance on the provision of pharmacy services affected by religious and moral beliefs

Bibliography recommended reading

• SIGN
• Handbook of pharmacy health education (2^nd Ed), Mason Harman. Pharmaceutical Press, (2002). ISBN 9780853694717.
• Pharmacy practice, Taylor and Harding. Taylor & Francis (2001). ISBN 04152 1592.
• Medicines in the elderly, David Armour and Chris Cairns. Pharmaceutical Press (2002). ISBN 0 85369 446 X
• ABPI Medicines Compendium (2009), published by the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries (also available at EMC)
• MCQs in pharmacy practice (2^nd Ed), Azzopardi. Pharmaceutical Press, (2009). ISBN 978-0853698395.
• Non-prescription medicines (4^rd Ed), Nathan. Pharmaceutical Press (2010). ISBN 9780853696445
• Pharmacy preregistration handbook (2^nd Ed), Taylor. Pharmaceutical Press, (2006). ISBN 9780853695134
• Pharmacoeconomics, Walley, Haycox and Boland. Churchill Livingstone (2003). ISBN 978-0443072406.
• Community pharmacy; symptoms, diagnosis and treatment (2^nd Ed), Rutter. Churchill Livingstone (2008). ISBN 978-0702029950.
• Pharmaceutical Practice (3^rd Ed), Winfield and Richards. Churchill Livingstone (2003). ISBN 978-0443072062
• British National Formulary for children, latest edition, Pharmaceutical Press. ISBN 9780853697411 (will change as new editions are printed).
• Clinical Pharmacy Pocket Companion (1^st Ed), Wright, Gray and Goodey. Pharmaceutical Press, (2006). ISBN 9780853696490
• Dietary Supplements (3^rd Ed), Mason, Pharmaceutical Press, (2007). ISBN:9780853696537
• Further MCQs in Pharmacy Practice (1^st Ed), Azzopardi. Pharmaceutical Press, (2006). ISBN 9780853696650
• Registration Exam Questions (1^st Ed), Bukhari, Pharmaceutical Press, (2008). ISBN 9780853696995
• Registration Exam Questions II (Tomorrow's Pharmacist): 2, Bukhari, Alsaid Pharmaceutical Press, (2011). ISBN 978-0853699767
• MCQs in pharmaceutical calculations (1^st Ed), Donnelly RF and Barry J, Pharmaceutical Press, (2009). ISBN978 0 85369 8364
• Independent and Supplementary Prescribing: An Essential Guide (2^nd Ed), Cambridge University Press (2010). ISBN: 978-0521125208
• Practical exercises in pharmacy law and ethics (2^nd Ed), Applebe, Wingfield and Taylor. Pharmaceutical Press, (2006). ISBN 978-0853695226
• Conducting your pharmacy practice research project. Smith FJ. The Pharmaceutical Press (2006). ISBN 0 85369 606 3
• International research in healthcare. Smith FJ et al. The Pharmaceutical Press (2008). ISBN:0853697507
• Pharmaceutical Statistics (1^st Ed). Jones D. Pharmaceutical Press (2002). ISBN: 0853694257.
• Introduction to statistics in pharmaceutical clinical trials. T. A. Durham and J. R. Turner Pharmaceutical Press (2008). ISBN: 978-0-85369-714-5
• Clinical Trials - What patients and volunteers need to know. L. Speid, Oxford University Press (2010). ISBN 978-0-19-973416-0
• Research in Health Care - Concepts, Designs and Methods. J. Sim and C. Wright. Nelson Thomas (2000). ISBN 0748737189