Good Pharmacy Practice: Pharmaceutical Services (FutureLearn)

This course builds on the Good Pharmacy Practice: Introduction to Clinical Pharmacy Services course. If you’re new to pharmaceutical services, we recommend that you complete the introductory course first.
Develop your medication safety and dispensing skills with automation

Increased automation has improved the processes and efficiency of many industries, one of which is the medical and pharmacy sector.

Over the first week of this course, you’ll look at the purpose of automation in pharmacy practice and how you can use it to increase patient safety and dispensing. You’ll cover the types of medication errors and the methods you can use to prevent them.
Assess and evaluate ethical decision making in pharmacy practice

For patient safety, it’s important that pharmacists know and follow ethical approaches. Being able to assess and evaluate ethical decisions is a key skill for pharmacists.

You’ll dive into ethics for pharmacy practice, including bioethics, medical ethics, and pharmacy ethics. You’ll also look at the pharmacy codes of ethics from the American Pharmaceutical Association to gain an understanding of the rules surrounding ethics.
Explore how to continue your professional development

With constant changes and updates to medications, delivery systems, and process models, professional development is vital for pharmacists.

To round this course out, you’ll look at international models of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and how to improve your professional medical performance.

What topics will you cover?

- Automation in Pharmacy Practice

- Medication safety

- Ethics for pharmacy practice

- Pharmacists’ continuing professional development

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Explore the purpose and the process of dispensing automation

- Identify dispensing system in the hospital.

- Describe the definition and classification of medication errors

- Explore the prevention and management of medication errors

- Describe the four principles of medical ethics and their applications

- Evaluate ethical decision making

- Reflect on the importance of maintaining continuing professional development

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for anyone with an interest in pharmaceutical service, especially those currently practising pharmacy.

It may also be useful if you’re studying pharmacy or related biological sciences.