Inter-professional prescription safety workshop for non-medical prescribing and pharmacy students: A cross-sectional study.

Abstract

This article reports on an evaluation of a prescribing workshop to increase ‘sharedlearning’ between registered practitioners undertaking a non-medicalprescribing (NMP) course (midwifery, nursing, physiotherapy, and podiatry) andundergraduate pharmacy students to increase awareness of, and understanding of theroles.  The focus was on three domains ofsafe prescribing: Knowledge (of commonly prescribed medicines and theirsuitability for individual patients); Process (of legal requirements and supplyof medicines and associated patient information); and Relationships (betweenprescribers and pharmacists). A cross-sectional evaluation was utilized with6-point Likert-style items and a free text section, completed by 337participants.  Participants reported positivelyabout the workshop content and their learning experience, although somedifferences between pharmacy and NMP participants were noted in the knowledgedomain. Quantitative analysis revealed significant differences (p<0.001) oflow-to-moderate magnitude (partial-2=0.146) between NMP and Pharmacy studenton all 3 domains, with NMP students reporting slightly more positive outcomes(between 0.4 and 1.5 points higher) in all cases. However, both groups scoredpositively; with mean domain scores of 15.6 to 16.5 on scales with maximumscores of 18.