Pharmacy placement proves to be the right prescription for clinical experience

Three University of Wolverhampton Pharmacy students got a dose of what’s to come in their careers when they chose to spend time on placement with the Yellow Card Centre team based at the City Hospital, Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, in Birmingham. 

Hashir Mujeeb, Zainab Shiekh and Jodie Gichia are in their fourth year of studies in the University’s School of Pharmacy and chose to do an elective placement working alongside each other as well as two pharmacists from the Yellow Card Centre West Midlands. 

The two-week placement involved spending time working in a clinical setting as well as creating a social media campaign to highlight and promote the Yellow Card scheme - a system for recording adverse incidents with medicines and medical devices in the UK, allowing patients and medical professionals to report when adverse drug reactions (ADR) have potentially taken place. 

Zainab said: “We learned about ADRs in our first year of study so it was interesting seeing this being put into practice in a patient setting. The placement was really useful and helped to improve my confidence. In particular, as I’m going into a hospital placement for my foundation year, this was particularly relevant to me.” 

Jodie said: “The chance to gain more experience in a professional setting ahead of my upcoming placement in a hospital was really beneficial. It was quite interesting seeing the different roles of a pharmacist other than doing ward rounds and checking on patients. This was much more niche and I really benefited from that, it was a really valuable experience. 

Hashir said: “It was a very unique placement compared to other placements and it was useful to experience something different in a workplace setting. This was a very different clinical experience offering us insight into clinical knowledge that we hadn’t experienced before.”  

Hashir will be working in a GP Practice for six months and in a community pharmacy for six months when he enters his foundation year. 

Karamjit Kaur Badyal, Pharmacovigilance Pharmacist at the Yellow Card Centre West Midlands, said: “It was a pleasure hosting the Pharmacy Students for their fourth-year elective placement. We were enormously impressed with their enthusiasm and dedication to raising awareness about the Yellow Card Scheme.  

“The aim of our placement was for students to work creatively to raise awareness of the Yellow Card Scheme and put health promotion into action in the real world. The students created content for social media including YouTube videos, Instagram, X posts and blogs for our website. The students then ran an on-campus ADR awareness event that was massively successful. This work will be used on our Yellow Card Centre social media channels in the weeks and months to follow to enhance awareness around the West Midlands.” 

Jyoti Buxani, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice/ Undergraduate placement lead at the University, said: “'Hashir, Jodie and Zainab elected to help build their knowledge but also give them an exposure to secondary care that they might not usually have insight of.  

“Despite having a busy second semester, they all decided that this would help provide them with a different experience. The students participated in self-study and were supported by Karamjit Kaur Badyal and Christopher Anton, Yellow Card Pharmacists, to raise awareness around the Yellow Card Scheme.  

“There was work that the students were involved in at City Hospital with raising awareness on social media platforms and also onsite at the University where they raised awareness with other students and teaching staff.  This experience has helped pave the way for future placement students.” 

The students’ work has appeared on X: @YellowCardWM, Instagram: yellowcardwm and a student blog will be published soon. 

For more information about the University of Wolverhampton and the School of Pharmacy head over to the University’s official website. 

This article was written by Media and Journalism student, Callum Burgess. Picture credit to Callum.

ENDS