Pharmacy with Preparatory Year

Highlights

This new MPharm degree is built specifically for the modern pharmacist, in collaboration with pharmacists from community pharmacy, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, GPs and primary care providers across North Wales. Our programme places emphasis on the patient, their medicine and their care, ensuring that our graduates have patient-centred care as their focus whilst being scientifically articulate experts in medicines and their use. Our innovative new curriculum includes up to 11 weeks of placement activity across our degree where you will develop your skills through real patient interaction as you develop your Entrustable Professional Activities under close supervision of a practising pharmacist.

Excellent facilities include a simulated pharmacy environment equipped with dispensary counter and consultation rooms; a clinical simulation suite with mock hospital ward; well-equipped cell and molecular research laboratories including a Category 2 pathogen lab; and state-of-the-art digital human anatomy suite with 3D anatomy visualisation. Excellent career opportunities with our programme preparing you with the skills and knowledge to practice safely and ethically within the emerging independent prescribing environment.

Course overview

Pharmacy is an exciting and constantly changing healthcare profession where the pharmacist as an expert in medicines is able to contribute to the health and wellbeing of patients and society. The MPharm course aims to provide students with the skills, knowledge, competencies and other attributes expected of the pharmacy profession as outlined through the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) Initial Education and Training of Pharmacists Standards 2021. The overall philosophy of the MPharm Pharmacy programme places the patient, and the way in which a pharmacist serves the needs of the patient, as central to the learning experience of the pharmacy student.

Whilst focussing on the patient, their medicines and their care, the MPharm programme will equip the future pharmacist with a strong scientific foundation that will inform their decisions in practice. The programme will equip the future pharmacist with the skills and knowledge to practice safely and ethically within the emerging independent prescribing environment. This exciting MPharm Pharmacy with Preparatory Year prepares students for a successful pathway through the four years of an MPharm programme after a successful Preparatory Year at level 3, building up knowledge and skills in science and health-related topics.

Placement activities will take place within Wales and will be focussed in the North Wales region with around 11 weeks planned across the duration of the programme. These placements are split between community, hospital and GP-based pharmacy settings along with plans to expose students to some non-standard settings within the programme. There will be no placements during the Preparatory Year.

During the placements students will grow and develop their skills and this will be monitored through placement supervisors guiding students through multiple Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) which will involve increasing levels of entrustment as the programme develops enabling the student to engage more autonomously with patients and their carers. Bangor’s five-year undergraduate MPharm Pharmacy with Preparatory Year programme equips a suitable graduate to become a pharmacist and independent prescriber, subject to the successful completion of a subsequent one-year Foundation Training programme (previous known as pre-registration training) and passing a GPhC Registration Assessment. In addition, graduates from this programme will also be eligible to join the register with the accrediting body as an Independent Prescriber (IP).

Whilst the majority of graduates choose a career as a practising pharmacist, other roles and jobs are available given the scientific nature of the programme. Bangor University…