Latest news
AI Meets Pharmacy: Modernizing Teaching Practices for Tomorrow's Pharmacists
By Tanja Fens
Exciting Advances in Pharmacy Education: Highlights from the Third Pharmacy Game International Symposium
The third Pharmacy Game International Symposium, held on June 3-4, 2024, in Groningen, brought together participants from 16 international schools of Pharmacy. This year's symposium focused on…
Promoting Active Learning in Pharmacy Undergraduates: Experiential Learning Workshop at EAFP Conference
By Tanja Fens
On Wednesday, May 15th, 2024, the annual EAFP (European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy) conference hosted an insightful workshop titled
"Promoting Active Learning in Pharmacy Undergraduates - A Workshop on Experiential Learning Activities."
This workshop was led by the international …
Reducing Pharmaceuticals in Water, a New Module Integrated in the Pharmacy Game: Evaluating the Module’s Effects on Students’ Knowledge and Attitudes
By Tanja Fens
Pharmaceutical residues end up in surface waters, impacting drinking water sources and contaminating the aquatic ecosystem. Pharmacists can play a role in reducing pharmaceutical residues, yet this is often not addressed in pharmacy undergraduate education. Therefore, we developed the educational…
Pharmacy students learning to become leaders in reducing pharmaceuticals in water
By Tanja Fens
Today we are launching a new educational module that will reflect aspects/elements of environmental sustainability, particularly pharmaceuticals found in water. The module will be integrated into the innovative educational tool, the Pharmacy Game at the University of Groningen. It consists…
Gamification in pharmacy education: a systematic quantitative literature review
By Denise Hope
“Gamification involves applying game attributes to non-game contexts and its educational use is increasing. It is essential to review the outcomes and the efficacy of gamification to identify evidence to support its use in pharmacy education. Systematically and quantitatively reviews…
7 steps to integrate the Pharmacy Game in a Pharmacy Curriculum
By Tanja Fens and Jugoslav Pavlovic
The interest in the Pharmacy Game is increasing. Its concept was made known during the international congress "Modern trends in Pharmacy, opportunities and challenges" held in Ohrid, Macedonia (5-9 October 2022). Two colleagues from the Pharmacy Game international team, Dr.…
Impact of a gamified simulation on pharmacy students' self-assessed competencies
By Denise Hope, Gary Grant, Gary Rogers, and Michelle King
Competency-based pharmacist education develops robust professional identities and prepares graduates for future practice to ensure optimal patient outcomes. An extended gamified simulation was developed as a capstone activity for a new Australian Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) program. The simulation was…
Virtualized Gamified Pharmacy Simulation during COVID-19
By Denise Hope
Extended and immersive gamified pharmacy simulation has been demonstrated to provide transformative learning in pharmacy education, preparing graduates for real-world practice. An international consortium of universities has implemented local adaptations of the Pharmacy Game into their curricula. From early 2020,…
Integration of an extended, immersive, gamified pharmacy simulation as a capston event
By Denise Hope
A gamified simulation was integrated as a capstone event for a new Australian undergraduate pharmacy programme. It aimed to consolidate previous learning and deliver an authentic activity aligned with self-determination theory to develop students’ professional identity and enhance their competence, …
The International Pharmacy Game: A Comparison of Implementation in Seven Universities World-Wide
By Tanja Fens
The Pharmacy Game is educational concept that intersects gamification and simulation, in which pharmacy student teams competitively manage simulated pharmacies; a concept included in the pharmacy curricula of seven international universities.
This study reveals its ways of implementation and conduct…
Experiential Learning in a Gamified Pharmacy Simulation: A Qualitative Exploration Guided by Semantic Analysis
By Denise Hope
Experiential learning is an important component of pharmacist education and is primarily achieved through supervised placement or simulation. This study explored senior pharmacy students’ experiential learning in an extended, immersive, gamified simulation, conducted as a capstone learning activity toward the…
Pandemic stops play, or does it…?
By Sarah Crawshaw
It can be said with certainty that 2020 has been a year unlike any other. In the UK, we thought our biggest challenge for the year was going to be whether we got a deal or no deal Brexit, we…
The pharmacy game, GIMMICS Vilnius 2020
By Indrė Trečiokienė
This year, in September, Gimmics was played for a second time at Vilnius University, Lithuania. Although the game started as planed – in four live pharmacies, it was decided to be moved online for the last game-week, due to the…
A Virtual PharmG Delivered Down Under in 2020
By Denise Hope
Staff and students of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, on the Gold Coast campus of Griffith University, Queensland, Australia, were the first to bravely undertake the challenge of delivering virtually the entirety of their GIMMICS-based gamified simulation, called PharmG.…
New publication! The Pharmacy Game-GIMMICS® a Simulation Game for Competency-Based Education
By Tanja Fens
The profile of the profession of pharmacists has profoundly changed over the last decades. Pharmacy education has moved towards competency-based education. The pharmacy game, called GIMMICS®, developed at the University of Groningen, is unique in combining simulation with serious gaming…
Bringing reality into a virtual world
By Tanja Fens
The Pharmacy Game is unique concept of education, giving the students a touch of the reality. During this course they are facing the same challenges the pharmacists have to face in their everyday work in the pharmacies. These scenarios are…
Game duration across the universities
By Tanja Fens
Following same concept in different settings results in a diversity of game duration across the universities. The graphic is an illustration of how many days the students in each university are playing one game.
The longest game is played at…