Specialist Mental Health Pharmacist Training Pathway

Learning and assessment

This is a part-time distance learning pathway and you will be provided with distance learning material on the University's virtual learning environment (VLE). Team-based learning will be employed as an active and collaborative teaching approach. You will be given four hours of learning material (pre-learning) at the beginning of each unit. You will then undertake a ‘readiness assurance process’ (RAP) individually and in teams to ensure you have the required underlying knowledge for the unit. You will then complete team ‘application exercises’ (AEs) to apply your knowledge to authentic cases.  

The application exercise sessions will all be online, and you can decide whether to complete them ‘synchronously’ (in a live online session), or ‘asynchronously’ over the period of five days using discussion boards, Microsoft Teams, or other suitable methods of communication.  

Finally, the unit will be summarised in the last week of the unit with a 1-hour webinar/question and answer session.  

The assessment will include the completion of an electronic portfolio. This will be structured to enable you to include evidence to demonstrate competencies against the Framework of core mental health competencies for all pharmacy professionals.

You will be required to include:

• A learning needs assessment
• One pharmaceutical care plan
• A Quality Improvement Project (QIP). This is a project or audit that shows baseline measurement, improvement, and then further measurement repeatedly over the duration of the pathway. This will run for at least two improvement cycles. You will describe and evaluate the variation in data over time with support from the University programme team, educational supervisor and learning in Units 3 and 10
• An educational assignment –  this could be in the form of a reflection of an educational experience to patients, carers or members of the Multi-Disciplinary Meeting (MDT) team
• Work-based assessments such as mini-CEX (Clinical Evaluation Exercises) and case-based discussions (CBD).  We will provide you with a library of validated formative assessment tools similar to those outlined in the Advanced Practice-Mental Health Framework and the RPS Advanced Pharmacist Curriculum to facilitate this.

For further information please contact the pathway team at mhpharmacist@bradford.ac.uk