introduction to the NMP Course video transcript

Hello and welcome to this video on the non-medical prescribing practice supervision for the University of Derby.

This is update part one and it's aimed at designated prescribing practitioners (the people who are taking ownership for signing off for an NMP student as safe and effective at the end of the course). That also encompasses “Practice Assessors”, which is the Nursing and Midwifery term, as well as ”Practice Educators”, which is what the Allied Health Professions’ council (the Health and Care Professions Council) calls the DPP.  The Nursing and Midwifery Council is decided to also have practice supervisors. The expectation is that whilst the DPP or Practice Assessor assigns off the student, the practice supervisor helps with that judgement as to whether they're safe and effective as a prescriber.

The update is in three parts. This one is covering the professional standards and providing a brief overview of the course. Part two is talking about the pedal pad or the practice assessment in its entirety and going through that and some of the points around practice assessment. Part three is an optional video on critical thinking, and that can be found on the Prescribing Practice Supervision website.

All three of the professions have standards for practice assessment. We use the competency framework for all prescribers that was published by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. The professional standards will be going through as well as where you can find your information sources, how to meet the DPP requirements and an introduction to the prescribing course.

One of the things you might want to ask yourself or might be asking yourself are What are the benefits? What are the benefits of being a DPP or practice assessor or supervisor to you as a professional, as well as to your students and to the organisation?

Some of the answers we'd suggest is that it's an information exchange that clearly the student will be learning from you, but there's also an opportunity for you to learn from a different perspective or a different set of skills that they might bring.

There's also the benefit of role modelling and shaping the future of the workforce of prescribers. So you're setting a good example so that when they exit as a prescriber, they are practising in a way that is safe and effective in terms of to the organisation.

What will happen is there will be more prescribers, more safe and effective prescribers and that results in care being closer to the individuals that need it and more efficiency. There can also be a benefit of focussed expertise in the sense that if you are spending your time on things that you have more of an expertise on rather than being spread more thinly and similarly for the new prescribers as well.

Just a reminder on this little model whereby it's the students, when they start, they're probably unconscious of all of the things that they need to learn to be a prescriber. They might be quite a specialist in their area of practice, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are aware of everything that they need to know to become a safe and effective prescriber.

So part of our job in your job is to make them aware of their learning needs and to introduce them to some of these things that they might not have thought of. So, for example, a little bit along the lines of advanced pharmacology or blood tests, investigations, that sort of thing, that they might not be aware of that they need to develop as part of their competencies.

Once they become embedded in the program and exit as a prescriber, they sometimes are aware of the steps that they've taken to reach a decision. They're still consciously thinking about it. So have I checked this or checked that whereby where you likely are as an experienced prescriber, an experienced practitioner is that you have mastered the skills and so it's become more intuitive and embedded. You know how you've arrived at the decisions without thinking about it.

So part of your role as a teacher of others is to bring that awareness back to the surface again. And we would expect students to ask you respectfully… ”how have you arrived at that decision?" So it can be as simple as going through the steps of how you got there and what influenced that… and obviously sometimes that can be quite complex and other times more straightforward

In terms of the professional standards, all three regulatory bodies dictate what we need is entry criteria. So that's why we need to provide clear evidence that the applicant has met the entry criteria for the program. They also expect evidence of the course structure and indicative content and assessment being as per their regulations and the practice assessment and supervision.

All three have different regulations and standards in relation to practice assessment and supervision for the Nursing and Midwifery Council. It's expected that we work in partnership and that supervision and learning is delivered in a way that enables students to meet the learning outcomes but does not compromise public protection. And that is a statement that is valid for all three regulatory bodies… That's why they exist - for public protection.

So if you want to look at their practice supervision guides, they have quite a few guides on the Nursing and Midwifery Council website. If you want more information, at the very least for all of the standards, you need to be aware of what the standards are that the students are working to. So you would want to know what the prescribing standards are for each of the professions in terms of standards for student supervision and assessment abbreviated as the SSA standards, they expect anybody who's dealing with a student who gains a qualification that changes the registration status to have done the SSSA standards training.

Now for GMC registrants, all that we ask is that you do the one hour update, including this video and or a live webinar. You don't have to do anything else. But for non-medical prescribers, there's also a mapping document for designated prescribing practitioners who are non-medical prescribers. And if you haven't done the associate training, there's an activity that needs to be done to meet those standards. For allied health professionals, it's important to know their prescribing standards as well because their legal authority to prescribe is quite different to pharmacists and nurses. For example, paramedics can't prescribe controlled drugs at all. Physiotherapists can and podiatrists can only prescribe a few.

 

So it's useful to look at their standards for prescribing and to access their website in regards to who can prescribe what. Some of the things that they say that are slightly different than the others as well is the idea of obtaining appropriate consent and a setting that is safe and supportive for learners and service users. So we've embedded that in the learning contract for the program. The GPhC prescribing standards, again are different because they've written their own learning outcomes. So, in in addition to the RPS competency framework which has its 76 competencies that are assessed in practice, we've mapped those to the learning outcomes that the GPhC have written as part of their prescribing standards.

 

They also dictate that the students must undertake 26 days of structured learning and 12 days or 90 hours of practice. And again, we've adopted that across all three professions. The difference in their learning outcomes is that they've adopted Miller's Triangle. And that means that the students are being assessed different levels. So whether they have the knowledge or applies the knowledge, etcetera. And that's just an example of how that's applied with those standards.

Evidence of meeting the professional requirements of the DPP. So as mentioned, if you are a GMC registrant (which most of our DPPs are), you just need to access this update. However, if you're a non-medical prescriber, there are some other things that we need. We need some evidence that you meet the competencies. As per the RPS competency framework for designated prescribing practitioners. Although we don't ask the GMC registrants for evidence of this competence, we would assume that you would look at this document as well as access to the resources so that you're up to date.

We have some information here if you want to find out more about what you need to do depending on your role. So it's the prescribing pages at the main university site. You can also Google it and find it. The first few things are for the applicants and then as you scroll down, it starts then to talk about practice assessment and practice supervision. And when you get to these dropdown menus, that's where it identifies clearly what you need to do.

So as mentioned, if you are a GMC registrant, particularly if you've had students before, we just expect you to attend an update of or listen to the videos. If you have another student before or even if you have, you can still enrol on the prescribing practice supervision course if you would like. It's optional for non-medical prescribers who've had previous and AP students. If you've had them with us before, it's just a matter of checking to see if the update has been refreshed since you've had the students to contact us you have any questions.

If you have had students before, but not at the University of Derby, we still need you to do the mapping document because how do we know what you know about assessing a student and about our course in particular, because they are all assessed differently.

So there is a mapping document. It's very short. It's only seven pages and we'll have a look at that in a minute. You do need to enrol in the prescribing practice supervision course in order to upload the the mapping document and of course you need to attend the update.

If you are a non-medical prescriber and you've had some experience of practice education but you haven't signed off a prescribing student before, we expect you to do the mapping document, but it also has additional pages with activities.

They're not all mandatory, but the activities are there to to help you provide evidence of meeting the competencies. If you have little experience of practice education, we recommend that you gain some experience before you undertake the responsibility of signing off a prescribing student. And if you're a practice supervisor, a similar others, a shorter document that needs to needs to be done.

Also on this website, you can find the these update videos and you can find the documents, the PDFs of the documents.

If you don't want to go on to the prescribing supervision course site. If you do want to enrol on the course, just have a look. You just go to this link. Enrol in a prescribing practice supervision course. Straightforward name, surname, email. Keep in mind that the email address is your login, so if you forget what you're logging is, it's whatever the email address is.

And then once you have done that, you can log into the course.

So I'm logged in now you can see that there's a range of free courses available at the University of Derby (online). You just search for free courses online and there's a numerous courses, but we're just concentrating on prescribing practice supervision now.

This is the prescribing practice supervision course.

It has some units, it has teaching within those units, it has documents. It has the mapping document and it has a place for you to upload the mapping document as well. This is where you would hand it in as an assignment and you get feedback on it.

If you score ten out of ten, then you get your award, which is a badge to say that you've completed the prescribing practice supervision DPP course. So we'll just have a quick look at what the mapping document looks like.

Now bear with me. So the seven page mapping document basically uses the RPA Competency framework for Deputies and it goes through each of the competencies and just asks you to briefly say how you've met those competencies. As you can see, there isn't much space. We don't expect a novel.

If you've got experience of assessing students, etc., then that just needs to go in there. So similarly for the other sections.

So as you can see, as with the competency framework for prescribers, it's quite a lengthy, or quite a number of competencies. And then just a brief overview of how you've gained your experience. And then of course we do need a testimony from somebody to see that yes, you are a prescriber, you have been for three years and you do meet the competencies as a DPP.

So that's the brief one. For the longer one, it's 26 pages and after those first seven pages, it basically consists of activities that can help evidence how you meet the DPP competencies. So for example, there's this one here, which is just a reflection on your knowledge and experience.

You don't have to do them all. You just do the ones that will that you need to do to show that you've met the DPP competencies, if there is one. If you haven't done the SSSA training, the uptake, training for nurses and you're supervising a nurse, then you need to do activity 2.3. Every single one of the activities is directly linked back to the course. So here you would go back to the course, undertake the activity and then do a brief reflection on it. So if you're signed into the course, you click on the link and it takes you to the page where that activity can be found.

Okay. So that is showing evidence if you're a non-medical prescriber of meeting the DPP requirements, and those are some links for the one off enrolment as well as the the mean log in page. And this is an example of what, what you're what you look at when you achieve that.

Okay. So just a brief overview now of the prescribing course, non-medical prescribing course. Just to keep in mind, the qualification is generic. So even though the students in practice are focusing on an area of specialism, the program has to be generic because legally when they exit, they can prescribe from the entirety of the BNF.

Now, if they're working professionally, that's within their scope of practice and whilst they're on the program in practice they’re assessed in their specialist area. But broadly, we teach a range of content because it needs to cover the generic. The generic aspect of prescribing the teaching is 26 hour days, and within that the themes are around professional, legal and ethical consultation, pharmacology and prescribing, as well as evidence base and research and governance and teamwork.

We deliver it on campus primarily as well as live webinar as well as directed study, and that tends to be recorded videos.

There's also tutorials which are optional and there's self-directed study as when the students

identify their learning needs for the nurses and allied health professionals in terms of assessment, they help to exams. Those are a calculations exam and a pharmacology exam.

They also have a prescription writing ask a very short ask whereby they just ask the basic questions.

In a simulated consultation. All the students undertake a poster presentation and that's to cover all the pharmacological and evidence base aspects of a particular drug or drugs that they will be prescribing and practice. And the purpose of that is that they are able to articulate to the patient why this drug, to the people in their care that they're prescribing for, why this drug.

And that's both in terms of the research, the guidelines, as well as the pharmacology of it. They also read an essay on the professional, ethical and legal aspects of prescribing.  for the pharmacists only, they have a set of clinical exams and that covers the basic clinical observations as well as a case-based discussion, Viva and a clinical decision making OSCE.

Practice we will cover in the next video. But just to say it is 12 days, which equates to 90 hours, 30 of which must be directly with the DPP who's signing them off. So that's a minimum of four days out of 12. However, they most of the DPP do spend far more than that with the students. They tend to spend most of the days, even if they are with other supervisors.

Okay, so that was part one of the update. Part two, is the practice assessment and part three is that optional critical thinking video. Thank you very much for your time and for supporting a student through the prescribing programme.

We hope it's a positive experience for you. Thank you.

We're always happy to email any information or we have a common address which is prescribing at Derby Dot AC UK that's Prescribing@Derby.ac.uk