To mark World Pharmacists’ Day, Dr Shane Cullinan outlines how the programme is developing future-ready pharmacists through prescribing education, simulation, artificial intelligence, mental health training, leadership and closer links with professional practice.
Meeting the changing needs of pharmacy practice
The role of the pharmacist is expanding. Pharmacists can now prescribe for a range of conditions, but they’re also making more clinical, complex and digitally-enabled judgements.
The fundamental role of the pharmacist remains the same: expertise in medicines and patient safety. But graduates are now entering a profession with expanding boundaries which more closely match the extent of training they undergo. Pharmacists have long supported patients beyond dispensing prescriptions in a number of ways like chronic disease management, health screening, medicines optimisation and lifestyle interventions. Now however, they are providing more clinical services, making more complex decisions, playing a bigger role in multidisciplinary teams and moving into prescribing.
This growing responsibility reflects wider changes in healthcare. People are living longer and often taking more medicines, while the medicines themselves are becoming more complex. Because of this, pharmacists need the clinical judgement and adaptability to assess individual situations and make safe decisions.
The MPharm curriculum has evolved proactively to meet these demands. The revised curriculum, introduced in 2022 and being completed this year, has strengthened experiential learning, redesigned placement modules with a greater emphasis on workplace learning and increased the focus on evidence-based complex decision-making, artificial intelligence and digital health. We have also redeveloped our teaching labs to simulate real-world clinical interactions and allow deeper integration of pharmacy technicians and practicing pharmacists into the teaching team.
RCSI’s partnership with industry partners such as UniPhar further strengthens the connection between education and professional practice. The partnership supports a patient-centred care laboratory, a four-month student placement and contributions to teaching, helping bring the realities of pharmacy practice into the learning environment.
Building prescribing skills and clinical judgement
Prescribing education is developed across all five years of the programme. Students build their understanding of medicines and disease, patient assessment, treatment selection and contraindications. In the fourth and fifth years, they work through more complex patient cases and justify therapeutic decisions.
The Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) tests whether students can apply their knowledge safely to the patient in front of them. Given a patient’s condition, medicines and clinical information, students must determine what action should be taken and how a medicine can be prescribed safely. The real value of the PSA is in testing whether students can translate knowledge about medicines into a safe clinical decision.
Preparing students for an AI-enabled future
In our programme, artificial intelligence and digital health are now introduced from the first year and ultimately will be developed as a vertical theme throughout the programme. Students will learn about AI literacy, digital health technologies, data-driven healthcare, ethics, limitations and risk.
AI may support more personalised care by helping healthcare professionals use patient information to optimise treatment. But it cannot – and should not – replace clinical judgement. Students learn that generated answers cannot be accepted as clinical gospel, particularly when AI hallucinations or errors could affect a patient’s health.
Bringing real-world practice into the classroom
Human connection remains central to pharmacy. Pharmacists are among the most accessible and trusted healthcare professionals. This is why communication skills are a core feature throughout the programme, helping students develop the confidence to connect with patients.
RCSI’s teacher-practitioner model brings current professional experience into the classroom. These pharmacists divide their time between pharmacy and teaching, giving students insight into how working pharmacists think, communicate and make decisions with patients in real workplaces.
Students also develop their skills through advanced simulation. Early scenarios may involve consultations, counselling about medicines or medicines reconciliation in hospitals. Later, students work through more complex communication and multidisciplinary situations, receiving real-time feedback as they progress towards supervised practice and demonstrating workplace competence.
Developing confident, compassionate healthcare leaders
These skills become particularly important when pharmacists are supporting patients with more complex needs.
Pharmacists play an important role in supporting patients with mental health needs. We address this through dedicated teaching, complex communication scenarios and mental health first aid training. Students learn how to engage with people who may be vulnerable and to recognise when mental health concerns may be emerging. Preparing pharmacists for this expanding patient-facing role also means developing the confidence to lead and influence change
Leadership – a core attribute we develop – is not defined by job title; it is the confidence to help improve systems and patient care. With this in mind, a final-year leadership module prepares students to identify problems, advocate for patients, introduce services and challenge decisions when necessary.
The changing MPharm programme reflects a broader shift: students are asked not just what they know, but what they will do with it, translating their knowledge into safe clinical decisions for the person in front of them.
Uniphar is the lead sponsor of World Pharmacists’ Day at RCSI, an annual event to recognise the vital role pharmacists play in improving health outcomes and shaping healthier communities.
Dr Shane Cullinan is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for the Masters’ in Pharmacy (MPharm) at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences.
RCSI is committed to achieving a better and more sustainable future through the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
