Being in charge of a pharmacy student during their crucial training year is a great way to develop your career and show your managerial skills. But it can also present many challenges, as any pre-registration tutor can attest to. So how can you achieve tutoring success?
 

Do be relatable

It’s unrealistic to expect to be best friends with every pre-reg who comes your way. But making yourself as approachable as possible can certainly help improve your relationship, says pre-registration tutor Altaf Vaiya. He stresses the importance of developing interpersonal skills, which will allow you to engage with your students. It is also important to be patient with your students’ learning styles if they are different from your own, because methods may have changed since you were a student, he points out.
 

Don’t spoon-feed

While your pre-reg undoubtedly needs your support and guidance, it’s important to let them learn how to make decisions for themselves. This approach means abstaining from “drip-feeding” them all the answers, says contractor and pre-registration tutor James Bryce. But this doesn’t mean letting your students flounder in unfamiliar territory. Mr Bryce stresses it’s important to “coax students through particularly tricky situations” and gradually reduce the amount of advice you give them over the year.
 

Do involve the rest of the team

It’s important to remember that tutoring a pre-reg student is essentially welcoming another member of staff to the pharmacy for a year, says Numark’s learning and development co-ordinator Elley Hamer. While this presents an opportunity for your whole team to get involved in the training, some of your colleagues may see your student as a threat, Ms Hamer warns. She recommends pre-empting this by encouraging your team to get involved – stressing that they can help ease your student away from study-based learning and into the world of work.
 

Don’t rely on in-house training schemes

Many multiples offer in-house training during the pre-registration year, but Mr Vaiya warns that these sessions are not always enough to develop all the skills a pharmacist needs. He recommends setting out a timeline of topics to cover with your pre-reg to ensure they have a good understanding of the syllabus.
 

Do cover all eventualities

In an ideal world, students would learn the entire registration exam syllabus through practical situations with patients. But Mr Bryce concedes that encountering every conceivable scenario within their training year is “just not going to happen”. Instead, he recommends “laying the groundwork” so that your student has a basic understanding of the whole syllabus.
 

Don’t forget to enjoy the experience

While taking on a pre-reg student has its own stresses, it can be a “really rewarding experience”, stresses Ms Hamer. “You can gain a huge amount from it as well as putting something back into the industry,” she says.

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