Course Catalogue

1. To prepare eligible health care professionals to prescribe, safely, appropriately and cost-effectively as independent and/or supplementary prescribers, in accordance with both legal and the professional requirements of relevant professional bodies (NMC, HCPC, RPS).
2. To address the specialist educational needs of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals working within specialist areas and with specific client groups.
3. To prepare health care professionals to exercise advanced clinical reasoning, critical thinking and creative problem solving with regard to the unique challenges associated with medicines management among infants, children and young people, the elderly and other specific client groups.

The programme utilises a variety of teaching and learning approaches that are designed to engage and inspire students. These include lectures, seminars, group work activities, simulation and tutorials. LJMU’s Learning and Teaching Strategy 2023-2030 has guided the programme delivery to ensure that learners develop and utilise progressively higher order and mastery level skills throughout the modules, as well as subject specific knowledge and skills as they become inquiring and confident advanced practice learners.

The range of learning and teaching strategies that are applied across the programme seek to develop and foster independence in the acquisition of knowledge and facilitate the application of theoretical knowledge. Students will therefore:

• Be enabled in acquiring knowledge through supported independent learning. This will include being directed to scholarly activities that will prepare them for scheduled teaching activity that is provided directly by members of staff in real time, either face-to-face or synchronous online. This may take the form of lectures, seminars, tutorials and webcasts.
• Be supported in engaging in online asynchronous activity. Examples include asynchronous tutorial discussions, tutor-facilitated discussion boards, and tutor-facilitated collaborations. While they may not be present at the same times as the students, academic staff actively, iteratively and directly engage with students to facilitate and guide learning, and are visible, engaged and active in the virtual learning environment.

Formative assessment will take place both within the theoretical module delivery and learning environment.  Within the module students will undertake formative tests in both the pharmacology & law elements and the numeracy competency. Students can also complete formative activities relating to their RPS competency framework with the Practice Assessor/Practice Educator as specified on their learning needs assessment. To prepare for theoretical assessment learners will be given the opportunity to practice the appropriate skills that relate to the variety of assessment methods that are utilised throughout the programme. 

The 'lecture' delivery hours represent the face to face teaching time that the students will be participating in and will consist of required attendance on campus for a face to face learning session or activity which can consist of Lectures, Seminars, Classroom activities, Role play, Workshops and/or Simulation. The allocation of additional 'online' delivery hours enables the learner to be facilitated to undertake a series of activities either through directed online learning, engagement with literature and resources, quizzes and activities such as discussion boards, library and IT sessions and academic skills development and assessment preparation time.

Students will be assessed using a pharmacology and law examination (pass mark 80%), portfolio (pass mark 50%), a clinical assessment document (Pass or Fail) and a numeracy examination (Pass or Fail with 100% required for a pass to be recorded). Their portfolio will incorporate reflections (One reflection on a clinical case, will be graded using level 7 criteria), a personal formulary, a log of practice hours and their learning needs assessment. Their clinical assessment document to demonstrate their achievement of the RPS Competency Framework (Pass or Fail).

NMC REGISTRANTS: The V300 award must be registered with the NMC within five years of successfully completing the prescribing programme and if they fail to do so they will have to retake and successfully complete the programme in order to qualify as a prescriber. In addition, students may only prescribe once their prescribing qualification has been annotated on the NMC register and they may only prescribe from the formulary they are qualified to prescribe from and within their competence and scope of practice. 

Students will complete an element of their assessment, the practice competency document which is based on the RPS Competency Framework within their area of practice.