University offers 70 extra funded pharmacist mental health training spots
The University of Bradford has been commissioned to provide 70 more specialist mental health pharmacist training places this year, it has announced.
The University of Bradford is offering 70 new places on its specialist mental health pharmacist training pathway, it announced this week (January 9).
The university and NHS England (NHSE) said that it has been “recommissioned” to provide the training for “a further two years for up to 70 pharmacists per year” following an “evaluation”.
Applications for the year-long distance-learning course via the university’s website are now open and will close on February 22, with the course starting on March 19, the university said.
The part-time training is fully funded by NHSE and provided in conjunction with Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, it added.
It is designed to improve pharmacists’ competence in medicines optimisation for “individuals with severe mental illness” and to get pharmacists working to the “full scope of their professional capability”, it said.
“Specialist pharmacist workforce”
The university said that the course supports “the journey to advanced level practice for experienced pharmacists”.
Over ten course units, participants can expect to improve leadership skills, research capabilities, advanced practice competences and raise their medicines expertise, it added.
Candidates for the programme must be “experienced” registered pharmacists that already work in a “community/primary care mental health team (CMHT)” with patients with severe mental illness, the university said.
Pharmacists can either be employed within the NHS or “through an NHS commissioned mental health service”, it added.
NHSE said that the course is an “investment in the future mental health pharmacist workforce” and will contribute to creating “new roles in mental health pharmacy” as it develops a “specialist pharmacy workforce”.
“A real achievement”
According to the University of Bradford, it is “the only university in England delivering this form of specialist training”, with “only one other university” providing “specialist mental health training” in the last two decades.
Course leader Assistant Professor Diane Webb said that the course is “a real achievement” and puts Bradford “on the map”.
The specialist mental health pharmacist course was first developed in 2021/22 with a class of 50 and this year welcomes its third cohort, according to NHSE.
The commissioner is supporting “200 mental health pharmacist training places in 2023 and 2024”, it said.
Education latest
It comes as C+D yesterday exclusively revealed that an independent prescribing training course offered by the University of Wolverhampton had been cancelled with less than a week’s notice.
Universities have been stepping up training of pharmacists, with the University of Bath announcing this month that its MPharm pharmacy course “will also be delivered at the University of Plymouth” from September 2024.
It follows the news C+D revealed in November that Teesside University in Middlesbrough “has begun work towards the accreditation of an MPharm degree programme”, with the university “working towards a first intake of students in September 2025”, subject to provisional accreditation by the regulator.
