Assessors workshop – why two days?

Why do I need to attend 2 days?

As a medicine’s assessor, we need to ensure that:

1. You demonstrate you are competent at administering medicines: tablets, capsules, oral liquids, creams, eye drops, and
2. You are competent at assessing others

This means we need to watch and assess you individually doing both 1) and 2). That takes time.

What will I learn on day 1?

You’ll learn to give medicines systematically, it’s probably quite different to how you are working at the moment.

We’ll teach you how to check each medicine systematically using a 7-point check. This isn’t about the 5,6 or 7 rights of medicines administration, this 7-point check is something you do. It’s a practical skill you’ll need to practice. Teaching people to work systematically using a 7-point check takes 3 simulated medicines rounds and lots of practice. In fact, it takes all morning.

The afternoon is taken up with showing you how to administer oral liquids (syringes), topicals (creams, ointments etc.), inhalers and eye drops.

But I’ve been administering medicines for years and had lots of medicines training!

You’ll almost certainly have picked up bad habits. In the 15 years we’ve been doing this, we don’t see people working systematically. Other medicines training tends to be theory-based and doesn’t teach you how to administer medicines systematically.

What do we learn on day 2?

We assess you putting the 7-point systematic check into practice administering actual medicines. Once happy, we then assess you assessing another person. We do this with 12 of you administering tablets and capsules, oral liquids, topicals and eye drops. As you can imagine, that all takes time to do properly. However, at the end of this course you’ll be assessed as competent to both administer and assess others.