Over the period of 10 months, September 2021 – July 2022, GMU College of Pharmacy 5th year students passed through intensive training and preparation before taking the final Prescribing Skills Assessment exam on August 23, 2022.
The Prescribing Skills Assessment (PSA) is conducted every year in the UK, through the British Pharmacological Society (BPS), with question items written by expert pharmacologists. The purpose of the PSA exam is to assess newly qualified clinicians’ prescribing competency upon graduation from medical/pharmacy school. PSA also serves as a benchmark that supports the improvement in curriculum and education quality. In a broader perspective, the PSA is expected to expediate plans for all pharmacists to become independent prescribers as part of their career progression. Gulf Medical University (GMU) has taken the step forward as the first University in the Middle East to implement the PSA to its pharmacy students and fresh graduates.
PharmD students went through 3 phases of training before taking this exam. The first phase was the “BNF Familiarity” phase, in which they were trained on how to navigate and effectively use the BNF to answer the exam questions. The second phase started with the 1st Mock exam which was done before they start their clinical rotations. Once they started their clinical rotations, the students went through daily training on all the cases and question types that can appear on the exam, and integrated them into their experiential training. The last phase was the 2nd Mock exam along with live feedback sessions on their performance, followed by the final exam. All of these training sessions are conducted by qualified preceptors and clinicians who are part of GMU CoP and the Thumbay University Hospital (TUH) practice site.