Decision-making: Learning outcomes

Last updated: Tuesday, September 27, 2022

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After completing this tutorial, you will be able to:
  • Outline why some clinical problems about medicines may be harder to solve. 
  • Describe strategies for managing these clinical problems safely. 
  • Discuss the steps to take if you discover you have made an error.
You can download a PDF of the whole tutorial.
You should allow 30 minutes to complete this tutorial.

Competencies

This tutorial is aimed at hospital trainee pharmacists, and will help you achieve GPhC learning outcomes such as these: 
  • LO 16 Apply professional judgement in all circumstances, taking legal and ethical reasoning into account
  • LO 17 Recognise and work within the limits of their knowledge and skills, and get support and refer to others when they need to
  • LO 18 Take responsibility for all aspects of pharmacy services, and make sure that the care and services provided are safe and accurate
  • LO 20 Act openly and honestly when things go wrong and raise concerns even when it is not easy to do so
  • LO 30 Appraise the evidence base and apply clinical reasoning and professional judgement to make safe and logical decisions which minimise risk and optimise outcomes for the person

If you are a foundation pharmacist, this tutorial may help you meet many competencies from the RPS framework including:
  • 1.1 Patient consultation
  • 1.2 Need for the medicines
  • 1.4 Selection of the medicine
  • 1.5 Medicine specific issues
  • 2.1 Professionalism
  • 2.2 Organisation (appropriately prioritises work)
  • 3.1 Gathering information
  • 3.2 Knowledge
  • 3.3 Analysing information
  • 3.4 Providing information
  • 3.5 Follow up


Continuing professional development

Finally, here are some CPD activities you could consider:

★  Arrange some time to shadow your local medicines advice pharmacist. How do they advise on the best course of action when faced with little or conflicting information on a particular topic? Use MiDatabank to review some past enquiries that presented more challenging clinical decisions.
★  Find out about your Trust's incident reporting scheme and ensure that you know how to submit a report. Maybe you could review some past incidents that have involved medicines with your pharmacy risk lead.