Patient Care / Clinical Education

This course is currently undergoing academic review. The following units are currently available with more to follow in the near future:

Foundation issues
Cardiovascular disorders

Background

Community pharmacy, in its primary-care role, is being called on to undertake an increased counselling role and for that role to involve the transmission of accurate, quality information, tailored to the individual. This emphasis can be seen in the rollout of S2/S3 training for pharmacy assistant and increasing emphasis by the National Coordinating Committee on Therapeutic Goods on intervention for direct product requests for S2 medicines and their interests in determining the quality rather than the bare process of the interaction.

In order to achieve this improved quality, pharmacists and pharmacy assistants will need to lift their level of understanding of basic disease processes and appropriate treatment, including non-drug options.

It is acknowledged that most pharmacists provide an adequate level of counselling most of the time. Data from the QCPP the mystery shopper program does suggest that there is a degree of unevenness in many process of counselling and, in some instances, in the information actually transmitted.

Pharmacists may present a fairly uneven educational picture depending on their age, adherence to continuing education regimens and overall clinical interest. This unevenness may have been exacerbated by the slowness of pharmacy board's in their implementation of guidelines for continuing education.

Target Market (demographics)

The target market for these units includes:

Community pharmacists in the 30 to 50-year-old age range or pharmacists who have been out of the workforce for three or more years
Pharmacists wishing to improve their underpinning knowledge and skills to prepare for the AACP MCQ process
Pharmacists wishing to complete a set number of units to qualify for the Award of ‘Fellow by Examination’ of the College.

Proposed learning objectives

Improve the underpinning knowledge and skills of graduate pharmacists , in target age range, in respect to major and common pathophysiologies of the major organ groups to ‘new-graduate’ level
Improve the underpinning pharmacotherapeutic knowledge of graduate pharmacists to ‘new-graduate’ level
Improve the underpinning knowledge and skills of pharmacists in respect to the 'foundation issues' as noted in Pharmacotherapy:
- Optimising and individualising pharmacotherapeutics:
  - Pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and pharmacogenetic considerations
  - In special populations e.g. paediatrics, geriatrics, in pregnancy/breastfeeding
  - Through drug delivery
  - Through quality drug information access and interpretation
- Monitoring drug therapy for efficacy and safety:
  - Clinical parameters
  - Interpretation of laboratory function tests
  - Pharmacovigilance
  - Minimising drug interactions

Learning outcomes

Pharmacists will apply the underpinning knowledge and skills, as above, to make their patient counselling more effective and more efficient
Accredited pharmacists (or those seeking accreditation) will apply the underpinning knowledge and skills as above to assist them in addressing the MCQ process as part of the AACP accreditation process and to assist in the preparation of their MMR reports
Pharmacists will apply the underpinning knowledge and skills, as above, to provide a sound, 'whole of body basis', for individual DSM programs.