Undergraduate student

Ditch the pharmacist registration exam

Graham Phillips made some interesting points in his letter ‘Is the registration exam failing trainees?’ ( The Pharmaceutical Journal 2015;295:213). Perhaps we should go further and question why there is a need for a registration exam. Is there eviden…

Delays to pharmacy education reforms ‘must stop now’, warns pharmacy chief

Reforms to pharmacy education have been delayed for “far too long” and progress must be made soon to deliver the pharmacists the health service needs, England’s chief pharmaceutical officer has warned.…

Exam failures help control pharmacist numbers

The news story on research that correlated lower entry standards and registration assessment failure rates ( The Pharmaceutical Journal 2015;295:170) was interesting reading but little more. The researchers did not follow individual students, only the schoo…

2015 RPS award winners announced

The winners of this year’s Royal Pharmaceutical Society Awards were revealed at the annual conference in Birmingham on 13 September 2015.…

How pharmacy students are taught in teams

Simon Tweddell brought team-based learning to students at the University of Bradford’s School of Pharmacy — and has secured a prize for his radical overhaul of the course.…

Is the registration exam failing trainees?

A cursory examination of pass rates of the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) registration assessment reveals an astonishing level of variation, from a high of 94.5% in 2012 to an all-time low this year of 74.0%. Overall pass rates as published by the GPhC are as follows: 2011: 85.5% …

The right direction for the registration assessment

I disagree with the recommendations by the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) that the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) should make changes in how preregistration trainees are assessed ( The Pharmaceutical Journal 2015;295:72). Some of the concerns from the BP…

How do we ensure pharmacists have the skills they need for their expanding role?

We asked several prominent academics and a student organisation what skills and abilities they thought pharmacists would need in the future and how education and training needed to change to deliver that.…

Nothing wrong with the quality of MPharm graduates

The Pharmacy Schools Council is concerned about the news item which appears to declare the “failure” of the current MPharm degree in educating pharmacists for future roles ( The Pharmaceutical Journal 2015;294:677). We strongly disagree with this sentiment…

Calculation exam could be done at university

I agree with the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) view that the General Pharmaceutical Council’s registration assessment does not reflect current practice. To reduce some pressure, perhaps pharmacy students could sit the calculation exam while at university. The passin…