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A: As a medicine’s assessor, you must demonstrate two things:
The skills and knowledge for 1. are taught on our Foundation Course which you must complete before attending the Assessors Course. You can complete our Foundation Course either online or in person.
A: For the first 15 years we only provided medication training face-to-face, and we’d ask this same question. After COVID, we changed our mind.
We learnt in-person courses were great for discussions, and demonstrating physical skills, but online courses came with advantages. We were already using more video in the classroom. Without it, you had 16 learners huddled round one trainer trying their best to see the detail of what we were trying to teach: checking and completing a medicines chart, carrying out a detailed medicines cross check, administering an eye drop etc. So we started using video in the classroom.
Now we could show these skills in close up, pause and discuss. It was also great for assessing: for example watch this video of someone administering this inhaler, did they administer it correctly? If not, what mistake did they make?
So when COVID hit, we knew video was a tried and tested approach. Also, when used online, learners could watch, pause and replay the videos in their own time, plus they had access to them long term. How much would they really remember from watching a demonstration just once, on a face to face course, more than a year ago?
We also found we could ask more questions online. With a face-to-face course, you had to wait for the entire group to finish a question set before moving on. This made it difficult getting the balance right between asking too many questions and making enough time to teach. With online, we can have more questions, and intersperse them more throughout the course. We can also give learners individual feedback. We’re still fans of face to face, but now we offer both formats and let you decide.
A: In the last 15+ years we’ve been training assessors, we’ve repeatedly found that medication courses from other training companies don’t teach the practical skills needed to administer medicines. Instead, they choose to focus on the theory, legislation and levels etc. There is a more in-depth article here that explains. In previous years, when we accepted prior learning from other medication training providers, we spent much of the assessors course revisiting content from our own foundation course. This was frustrating for learners who’d completed our foundation course. It also meant we didn’t have enough time to teach how to actually assess.
A: Our Foundation certificates have a 2 year expiry, but through experience, we’ve found many learners had forgotten some of their practical skills, meaning we had to revisit foundation content on the assessors course. To make it easy for you, we include an online foundation course as part of the assessors course.