Therapeutic skills I-III

In the interview of an elderly person, usually a relative, the students gain an awareness of the topic. They take first steps in communicating with patients and learn that the application of drugs is often not as prescribed. The patient interviews are an important preparation and an “ice-breaker” before working with patients at the hospital.
The interview can be performed face-to-face or by phone/video conference. However, only a face-to-face interview can detect practical problems with handling drugs and sensitive topics like compliance with the therapy are easier to address.

Findings from the patient interview are discussed in the plenum. The students link their own experience with the content of a previous lecture. Quantitative results of the interviews like the age of the patients and the number of drugs used can be collected either in presence by simple raising of hands or voting tools like EduApp can be used to show results and compare them with the literature.

Students work together with patients to find solutions. First, students learn the correct handling of drugs and special dosage forms and then instruct the patients. They observe difficulties that arise and develop and test strategies to overcome these. The students receive immediate feedback from the patients and can adapt the strategies or their way of explaining. Most importantly, they learn to communicate with patient by developing individual strategies together with the patient.
Face-to-face work is needed to become aware of the hurdles in the correct use of medication and experience the impact of visual and motoric limitations on the handling of drugs or opening of packages.

The lecturers comment the discussed strategies and give further input on clinical and pharmaceutical aspects. The students can link their own experience to the new knowledge and gain confidence in future counselling of patients.
When using videos of the student-patient interactions (i.e. when the access to the hospital is restricted), important details can be studied in plenum by using the pause and repeat function. This facilitates sharing of experiences and knowledge since there may be large differences between patients.

In the pharmacy internship between lessons, the topic is practiced and deepened and can be discussed with the pharmacist supervisor. The students practice and improve their communication skills as well as their knowledge on strategies to overcome hurdles in the correct use of medications.

Students create an instructional video on the correct use of individual medications and share it with other students. They meet in presence and discuss the best way to use and explain the use of the medications.
The sharing of the videos is not limited to the face-to-face lecture and allows students to expand their knowledge to dosage forms they have not worked with themselves.