The Pharmacy Game Newsletter

International symbol of the Pharmacy Game

The international symbol of the Pharmacy Game is created to serve as identification of this educational concept used all over the globe. It combines the letters P with snake and G in black and gray, where P stans for Pharmacy, G stands for Game (the black collor of the letter) and Groningen (the gray color of the letter). The International users can personalized this symbol by replacing the tekst “pharmacy game” from the symbol with adding the place where their university is situated.

Interview with Shivam Sharma, Pharmacy Game student

Who are you?

Hi, my name is Shivam and I’m a recently qualified pre-registration pharmacist from the University of Bath! I am currently completing my pre-registration training year in a community pharmacy serving my local community in Greater London. I enjoy pharmacy as it gives me the chance to interact with patients on a daily basis and have meaningful impacts upon their health. Every day and every patient is different!

Interview with Simon Winkler, Pharmacy Game actor

Who are you?

I have been an actor for 20 years. I have appeared in a multi episodic role in a TV show on BBC called Almost Never I have also appeared in Requiem (BBC 2018), Casualty (BBC), Billie and the Ghost (Disney), Outlander (Sony), Davinci's Demons (BBC/Starz), and the feature films The Machine and The Baker. I have been doing medical role play for over 15 years with Bath and Bristol and the NHS and Fire Service

Playing the Pharmacy Game in pandemic time

The pandemic situation all over the world affects different areas of everyday life, including (higher) education. As the Pharmacy Game is used to train students’ practical-skills like communication, it requires face-to-face contact. It is therefore a challenge to run the game under current circumstances. Each university approached this challenge differently and moved towards online teaching of their Pharmacy Game. In Groningen the theoretical part will be taught completely online and for the practical days adequately sized rooms for simulated pharmacies will be used in combination with hygienic measures, so that the students can be present in the simulated pharmacy to best experience socialization, qualification and personal development. In Utrecht the game was played this summer, physically in an adapted way (4 students per pharmacy, the rest via MS Teams using a rotation schedule). Their course then lasted 3 weeks, for students whose course was abruptly canceled last March. In Belgium, the game will be run in a split way, with 4 students from each simulation pharmacy coming to the campus and the other students participating from home. This schedule is switched every day, so all students will have at least three days on campus with live experience. These small groups are called “bubbles” and students are instructed only to interact with that particular bubble