10
F
Dec
2018
Feature
PARTNERING UP: Pharmacy
students take part in workshops
with nursing and medical students.
“You can’t teach them every disease
and every drug, it’s just not possible,” says
Professor Brock.
“We’d rather give them a tool kit and make
sure they know how to use those skills.”
It’s a bold move for the faculty, which for
two years running has come second, between
Harvard and Cambridge, in the QS Top
University rankings.
But, as Professor Brock explains, that
ranking reflects mainly the research output.
Monash wants to show its educational
credentials are also world-leading.
The move to course-wide interactive
teaching was driven by the findings of large
international study and local pilots. The study,
published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, concluded that if education was a
clinical trial, it would be unethical to continue
teaching the old way.
“We have much more information at our
disposal now and we know that engaging
students in the learning process is the thing that
helps them,” Professor Brock says.
“Deliberate practice and feedback are
the only way to have long-term retention of
knowledge and skills.”
Community and hospital pharmacists have
helped reshape the teaching approach.
They had given the faculty feedback that
while graduates were bright and smart, “they
can’t do very much”, Professor Brock says.
This was partially a by-product of trying to
Six things to know about new Monash degree
1. The new pharmacy degree was introduced with the 2017 cohort.
2. It still takes five years to complete and the final year remains an internship, but graduates
will leave with both a bachelor’s and a master’s of pharmacy.
3. More than one-third of instruction is delivered through weekly workshops in which students
work in groups of six. A practising pharmacist facilitates most of these workshops.
4. Every two weeks students, meet with an academic coach – one per 10 students — to reflect
on and receive feedback on their skills development.
5. While there are still lectures, these are interactive and focus on resolving any ambiguities
from the workshops and self-directed learning elements of the course.
6. Students head out on placements in their first year — an aspect of their education that
once began in third year.
teach as many medications and disease states as
possible, she says.
A sign of the success of the new approach
came when a group of second-year students
picked up an anomaly that may lead to a change
in the Australian Medicines Handbook.
Tasked with finding a medication-related
problem for a patient on dialysis, they identified
that a drug administered according to AMH
recommendations might lower the patient’s
blood pressure too much.
Feedback was provided to a nephrology
pharmacy expert group, which will be
recommending a change in the next edition.
“These are second-year students. For them
to identify [the problem], communicate it and
advocate for the change, that’s a pretty big,”
says Professor Brock.
Collaboration with other health
professionals is a core to the teaching
philosophy, with pharmacy students taking
part in workshops with nursing and
medical students.
“We know patients get the best care
when everyone on the team is interacting and
practising at the top of their scope of practice.
But to do that, we need to understand what the
scope of practice is.”
In one workshop, the ratio was one
pharmacy student to two medical students,
but Professor Brock says it was “magic”
watching her students advocate the best care
for the patient, in this case someone affected by
thunderstorm asthma.
While the real impact will be seen
when the students go out on longer
placements, she believes the collaborative
approach will help de-escalate turf wars
between the professions.
“Maybe in the distant future, we will come
down to the last two things that need to be
done and we can fight about it. But we are so
far away from that that it doesn’t serve anyone’s
interests to not work collaboratively.”
However, she acknowledges that
collaboration is a skill that must be taught.
“Working as a team is hard,” she says.
Joining forces with other pharmacy faculties
is also an important focus, says Professor Brock.
In addition to Australian collaboration via the
National Alliance for Pharmacy Education,
Monash has an alliance with the University
of North Carolina in the US and University
College London in the UK.
“It wouldn’t be acceptable to us that just
our graduating class was really great. It’s not
enough. That will only help a very small number
of people. But if we work together with some of
the best programs world-wide, imagine what a
difference that could make.”
Comment online
www.pharmacynews.com.au