26 August 2015
APC Colloquium 2015 – the cake is baked!

The Australian Pharmacy Council’s 2015 Colloquium, “The Secret Ingredient: can we turn up the heat on experiential education”, was held on Tuesday 25 August in Canberra.
The event bought together a variety of delegates from Australia and New Zealand as well as a number of online participants via web cast and social media.

Delegates heard from a variety of local and international speakers including UK practice pharmacist Ravi Sharma, who engaged the participants with his a la carte menu of the UK practice experience. Ravi spoke to delegates about the barriers he experienced in his development as well as potential ways to overcome these barriers.
He proposed a “Pharmacist 2.0” model that has professional mobility and stated that this can only be supported by pharmacy learning that is experiential and inter-professional. Australian pharmacist Dr Chris Freeman spoke about how to prepare pharmacists for practice and highlighted the need for clinical residencies to support the pharmacist learning experience.

Pharmacy academic Judy Burrows followed on from this emphasising the need to address variations in practice in order to produce a well-rounded, high performing pharmacist.

Dr Ian Larson showed how simulation technology in teaching was a tool to use in pharmacy education to enhance and improve the learning experience for students. New Zealand based physician and medical educator Professor Tim Wilkinson provided us with insights into the medical model with sage advice, “we need to look at how we can promote engagement with the learner, the workplace and the supervisor”.

The profession debate proved to be entertaining with the Negative Team, led by academic Dr Erica Sainsbury, convincing that it is not only the profession that can “bake the cake”.

Rather a range of groups from the universities, preceptors, mentors, role models and patients help to prepare students and interns to be pharmacists.

This led into a workshop between delegates on what makes a good (and bad) role model and mentor.
Debra Rowett, APC President summed up the day as “we wish to thank the speakers, delegates and online participants of this year’s colloquium and look forward to continuing the conversation about experiential education”.

APC Newsletter – Insights Volume 1 Issue 3

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