Learning to prescribe
The Division of Social Research in Medicines and Health have recently published the following paper:
Learning to prescribe- pharmacists’ experiences of supplementary prescribing training in England
Richard J Cooper, Joanne Lymn, Claire Anderson, Anthony Avery, Paul Bissell, Louise Guillaume, Allen Hutchinson, Elizabeth Murphy, Julie Ratcliffe, Paul Ward,
BMC Medical Education 2008: 8:57 – open access at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/8/57 - please follow this link to see more details.
Lay summary:
The introduction of prescribing for professions such as pharmacists and nurses in recent years offers additional responsibilities and opportunities but attendant training issues. In the UK pharmacists must complete an accredited training course at a university where the skills and knowledge necessary for prescribing are taught. These courses are either for single professions or multi-professional. As part of a larger evaluation a postal survey was sent to all 808 registered pharmacist supplementary prescribers in England in April 2007. We achieved a 51% response rate, of whom 58% agreed that the training course had been useful and 62% agreed that the necessary skills for prescribing had been learned. The part of the courses they valued most were clinical examination, consultation skills training and practical experience with doctors. There were mixed views about interprofessional courses’ insights into other professions being valuable. However, knowledge and skills differences, for example, in pharmacology and therapeutics, proved more problematic. Pharmacists appear to value their prescribing training. The benefits of inter professional learning however, may conflict with providing profession-specific training.