UWA Handbook 2025

Unit Overview

Description

The Medicines Management and Pharmacy Care units form the core of the pharmacy curriculum and are structured around body systems and disease states. Each unit provides students with a comprehensive understanding of medicines management in the context of person-centred care. These units integrate the chemistry and pharmacology of medicines, their formulation and delivery, clinical application, and the principles of therapeutic management, ensuring safe and effective medicines use. Therapeutic concepts focus on person-centred care, including drug selection, monitoring, and self-care, including a commitment to First Nations peoples and other underrepresented groups to address equity in healthcare.

Integrated themes help prepare students for person-centred care through the continued application of knowledge in patient cases. Patient cases will reflect this progression, becoming more complex as students revisit and apply knowledge from previous body systems and themes. These cases emphasize the pharmacist's role as medicines experts with a broad, generalist perspective, reinforcing students' ability to integrate their learning into diverse real-world pharmacy practice settings.

A variety of teaching and learning approaches, including integrated case-based discussions, clinical skills labs, pharmaceutical science labs, hands-on workshops, and team-based learning, reinforce and build upon knowledge gained in previous units. In first year, students will participate in community pharmacy immersion placements in community pharmacies to consolidate knowledge and skills from coursework. These hands-on experiences develop essential problem-solving and decision-making skills, preparing students to become "practice-ready" pharmacists.

Credit

18 points

Offering

Availability	Location	Mode	First year of offer
Not available in 2025	UWA (Perth)	Face to face

Outcomes

Students are able to (1) demonstrate personal autonomy, professionalism, integrity, and accountability in simulated settings; (2) analyse simulated and real-world situations and apply critical thinking and decision-making skills when assessing legal and ethical aspects of pharmacy practice; (3) apply established and emerging pharmaceutical science (pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical calculations, and medicinal chemistry), pharmacodynamic, and pharmacokinetic principles to ensure safe and quality use of medicines; (4) prepare and supply medicines accurately and efficiently, including basic extemporaneous preparations, in accordance with legislative and accepted professional practice standards; (5) demonstrate a contemporary understanding of diseases and conditions in terms of pathophysiology, health determinants, pharmacotherapeutic, lifestyle, and population-based management; (6) search, evaluate, and apply up-to-date drug information and pharmacy-related literature to a variety of simple scenarios in simulated and real-world settings using established research principles and methods; (7) provide person-centred care by integrating and applying foundational pharmacy knowledge, clinical skills, and the pharmacist patient care process to a variety of simple clinical scenarios in simulated settings to promote, maintain, and/or improve patient health, with a commitment to First Nations peoples and other priority populations, and a dedication to inclusive, equitable and accessible healthcare; and (8) demonstrate communication skills that enable the provision of team-based, inclusive, culturally safe, person-centred care to diverse populations using contemporary and traditional formats.

Assessment

Indicative assessments in this unit are as follows: (1) in-semester assessments; (2) end of semester assessment; and (3) professional behaviour. Further information is available in the unit outline.

To pass this unit, a student must: (a) achieve an overall mark of 50 per cent or higher for the unit; and (b) achieve the requisite requirements(s) or a mark of 50 per cent or greater, whichever is higher and specified in the unit outline, for the professional behaviour component.

Student may be offered supplementary assessment in this unit if they meet the eligibility criteria.

Unit Coordinator(s)

Dr Natalia Popowicz

Unit rules

Prerequisites

Enrolment in

or 51500 Master of Pharmacy CM039 Bachelor of Human Sciences (Pharmaceutical Health) and Master of Pharmacy

Successful completion of

or PHCY3303 Foundations of Pharmacy PHCY4403 Foundations of Pharmacy

Contact hours

10-14 hours of lectures per week, 7-10 hours tutorial per week, 6-8 hours of work integrated learning per week