7 Duty of Care and Policy on the Rights of Patients in Pharmacy Education

Although students are supervised while on experiential placements, you still have a responsibility to adopt and maintain a duty of care toward patients and other health care professionals. Please review the “Pharmacist’s Code of Professional Conduct” in the current APF and follow this Code in your practice. Other professional standards and guidelines are available in the APF and students would benefit from familiarising themselves with these principles.

Policy on the Rights of Patients in Pharmacy Education

These guidelines have been developed by the School of Pharmacy for educational activities that are not considered part of usual or routine clinical care.

• Patients must understand that pharmacy students are not qualified pharmacists.
• Preceptors and students must obtain explicit verbal consent from patients before students take their case/drug histories or physically examine them, making sure they understand the primarily educational purpose of their participation.
• Preceptors and students should never perform physical examinations or present cases that are potentially embarrassing for primarily educational purposes without the patient’s verbal consent-including for the number of students present. When individual students are conducting/witnessing such examinations a chaperone should usually be present;
• Patients who are unconscious or incompetent must be involved only in primarily educational activity only with the explicit agreement of their responsible clinician and after consent from parents (children) or consultation with relatives (adults);
• Students must respect the confidentiality of all information communicated by patients in the course of their treatment or participation in educational activity. Patients should understand that students may be obliged to inform a responsible pharmacist or clinician about information relevant to their clinical care.

Preceptors are responsible for ensuring that these guidelines are followed. If students are asked by anyone to do the contrary, they must politely refuse, referring to these guidelines. Encouraging students to ignore these guidelines is unacceptable.