Learning is a two-way street when it comes to working with pharmacy students, writes Tomas Conefrey
I qualified as a Pharmacist 26 years ago and have worked in the same pharmacy for nearly all of those years. A lot of the time, I feel the job has become a grind. Patients’ expectations have never been higher, the phone never stops ringing, and the Heathmails keep on piling in.
It would be easy to get stuck in a rut in our situation, but it can be the small things at work that snap us out of it. For nearly 20 years, I have worked with Pharmacy students from all the colleges in Ireland and am enjoying the challenge of starting them in their professional careers. It is like I have learned a new ‘hold’ or ‘move’, in sporting terms.
I was out socially with a group of colleagues last year and was astonished how none of them worked with students, or even seemed to know much about what is involved. Good staff are precious and a lot can be said for continuity, especially in a dispensary. When you have a new person coming in twice a year, it can be unsettling to have to do training for the same role twice.
In my experience, I have found that I get access to two different perspectives from each student and it is interesting to me to see what they study in college. Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources to run a full-blown training programme but over the years I have picked some articles, resources and podcasts and use them to structure the placements.
For fourth-years, I would expect them to be able to dispense a prescription fully and have it ready for checking by a pharmacist after 16 weeks. This means entering the patient’s details onto our pharmacy software and setting-up a patient’s medication record with as many details as we have about the patient. After that, they would assemble the prescription, print all the labels and relevant receipts and have it all ready in a basket for checking.
For 5th year pharmacy students, they are expected to do all the above after their first 10 weeks. I also work with them covering over-the-counter codeine sales, over-the-counter motilium and sumatriptan. They become familiar with our standard operating procedures and other processes in the pharmacy. Every student is different and it can take me some time to figure out how best to work with them, and this challenge I enjoy, as it makes me think outside of the box.
For fourth-years, I would expect them to be able to dispense a prescription fully and have it ready for checking by a pharmacist after 16 weeks
There are three main things I have gotten from my years of working with students. The first point is that you learn a LOT. I sometimes say I get more from the students than they get from me. The second point is the different perspectives they offer. I have found that if I delegate a task to a student, it comes back to me 10 times better than I could have done it myself. They often have tweaked it in a way that never occurred to me, and helps me to think differently.
Finally, they say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ — I think it takes a shop to develop a pharmacy student. I enjoy seeing our staff work with the students, as there is an awful lot of experience that is sometimes overlooked. This applies to our front-of-shop staff especially. They meet the patients every day, have an excellent knowledge of over-the-counter medicines, and through years of experience, are excellent communicators.
If you feel a little stuck or would like a new challenge in 2025, I can highly recommend working with Pharmacy students. You will learn a lot about yourself and how you practise, and the time and effort put in will come back to you in spades in the future.
About the Author: I am a Community Pharmacist is Pearse Street, Dublin 2. I have
a strong interest in pharmacy training and staff development and just when I think I have figured out the answers, they go and change the questions. Every day is therefore a learning day.
