Training Future Pharmacists

As a result, being able to talk to members of the public about their symptoms is an important aspect for newly graduated Pharmacology students.

To help with this, the School of Pharmacy applied for a Cascade grant to create Patient Cafés, which give students the opportunity to hear from volunteers about their experience of health, ill-health, caring for others and medicines. This experience is vital for their ongoing development and to help prepare them for working as a pharmacist once their degree has finished. Something that wouldn’t be possible without your generous donations to Cascade.

At the Patient Cafés, groups of students from each year of the Pharmacy course interview up to 10 volunteers, across four sessions spread throughout the academic year. In total, more than 1,280 students benefit from the meetups each year.

Funding for the Patient Café was awarded in 2018 and was due to start later that year. However, the launch was postponed until 2020 due to the Covid-19 outbreak and lockdown. Undeterred, the organisers held ‘Virtual Patient Cafes’ so students could still experience what it’s like to speak to members of the public, albeit through a computer camera.

In fact, the sessions were so successful that in 2023, volunteers for the service picked up our Community Volunteer of the Year award. The nomination noted: "They are a real asset to the programme and the sessions they provide make a huge difference to the student experience by providing students with real-life opportunities to interact with patients from all walks of life, helping to develop them in to caring, compassionate pharmacists of the future."

Now, skip forward to 2024 and the School of Pharmacy has been able to hold its first in-person Patient Cafés, thanks to your Cascade donations. We took the opportunity to attend one of the sessions and learn from student participants what a difference the cafes have made to them and the community volunteers.

“Meeting the volunteers in-person makes such a difference, compared to being online or learning about conditions in lectures,” said Pharmacy student Shaha. “In lectures, we might have a Powerpoint presentation showing ‘Sarah who is 53 and has cancer’ but when someone is front of you, suffering from a condition, it’s a completely different situation.

“Although it can be quite hard to hear some people talking about their conditions, I need to get used it to it because I may end up being their first point of contact. The Cafés really help to make sure I’m empathetic to their needs.”

Meanwhile, fellow Pharmacy student Ella explained that she was pleased the Patient Café was finally being held in-person, rather than online. “Meeting them in café helps you feeling like you’re getting to know them better because there isn’t the barrier of the screen. When I did the Teams calls in the past, it felt quite formal but the whole point of these sessions is to try and build a rapport.

“I’ve found it really beneficial and it’s definitely helped to build my interpersonal skills. That’s such a big thing for us when we become pharmacists because the expectation is that we’re no longer behind the counter just getting the tablets ready. We’ll be interacting a lot more with patients. It’s helping us to make sure we don’t just look at people as a prescription or a list of medications. They’re a person at the end of the day with their own medical history.”