The students are all set in Practicum • "Adds an extra dimension"

The smell of freshly painted welcomes visitors to Practicum, Sweden's largest and most modern environment for clinical and practical training in the life sciences. Here, at the heart of Uppsala's Biomedical Center are the 1,600 top-equipped square meters that have enabled Uppsala University to take another giant leap in the education of future healthcare experts. A few steps ahead, the doors are already open to three authentically furnished training pharmacies and the drugs storage room with inspiration from the Uppsala University Hospital.

“We all know how valuable it is for future pharmacists to practice customer meetings in realistic environments, and what we see here is the result of four years of purposeful work where both teachers, students and pharmacy chains have shown a fantastic commitment. We have planned everything down to the smallest detail to get it perfect, and are already experiencing how the students enter the role-plays in completely new ways,” says Karin Svensberg, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Pharmacy.

At first glance, the three training pharmacies are identical to any pharmacy on the streets of Uppsala. Here we find the checkout counters, spaces for prescription drugs and well-stocked shelves with familiar products. Not until a potential customer feels a package does the illusion break. The only thing for sale is empty wrappings, collected by employees and friends of the Faculty of Pharmacy. The wall-fixed interior, on the other hand, is genuine throughout.

“It has been a truly rewarding journey for us as a pharmacy chain to be part of. The collaboration has gone from early idea sketches to functional solutions where we have contributed knowledge and inventory. Standing here and looking at the result, I am convinced that this will generate important values ​​for the training of future generations of pharmacists,” says Lukas Fjell, construction project manager at Kronans Apotek who, together with Apoteket AB and Apotek Hjärtat, made the new environments possible.

At Practicum, a number of educations at Uppsala's Faculties of Pharmacy and Medicine meet. Each environment is uniquely designed according to the needs of the various programmes - here, among other things, there is a fully furnished home for the university's new Occupational Therapy Programme - and all three pharmacies offer advanced AV-equipment with strategically placed cameras, well-sized screens and adjacent rooms where teachers and fellow students can see and analyze ongoing role-plays without interrupting.

“We have just practiced customer meetings where we, in the role of future prescriptionists, face real challenges and meet them with self-care advice or decisions about other measures. To do this in such a realistic environment as Practicum adds a lifelike feeling for what our professional life will be like, and we hope that everyone who considers a pharmaceutical education realizes the completely new dimension Practicum adds,” say Olivia Steen and Caroline Gauffin- Shapoval, fifth semester students at the Bachelor of Science Programme in Pharmacy.

The importance of role-playing to develop abilities to communicate with patients and gain relevant insights into their needs is well documented. The fact that the Faculty of Pharmacy's students now will apply their theoretical knowledge in authentic environments will not only further prepare them for future internships. The premises have also proven to add extra time for practical training.

“In the past, we have used scotch to attach notes to the walls, which was ineffective and hardly contributed to bring the exercises to life. Now we enter all set, flexible environments that boosts both variety and dynamism. We already have several exciting ideas for future classes that these premises enable, but today we are above all happy that the Practicum so clearly adds new energy to the students' knowledge development,” says Sandra Yilmaz, Lecturer at the Department of Pharmacy.

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Magnus Alsne, Mikael Wallerstedt