The Pharmacy Game Newsletter

The Leiden University Medical Center, LUMC, is the new partner of the Pharmacy Game consortium. During the last consortium meeting, the partners met Martina Teichert, a pharmacist, epidemiologist, and associate professor at LUMC, teaching methodology. She is also involved in pharmacy practice research. Speaking of the last, she was the initiator for implementing the Pharmacy Game, GIMMICS in Leiden. Few words about the university of Leiden. It is the oldest Dutch university, which had a pharmacy study back in the last century. In 2016 the master's pharmacy program was re-established under the umbrella of the medical faculty in Leiden. The master's study is three years, wherein students have nine blocks organized around a particular topic for the first two years. Each block involves two weeks of training at the university and six weeks of internships in community, hospital and outpatient pharmacies. With 2,000 community pharmacies, internship location are no problem, however with 100 hospital and 60 outpatient pharmacies, this is well the case for the latter. Therefore the  Pharmacy Game (PG) will be used in combination with clinical internships, having half of the in total 50 master students of one year doing internships and the other half playing the game at the end of the first year. In the beginning of the second year, students will be divided the other way around. The first game will be introduced in October 2022. Implementing the PG in Leiden is a change for the whole curriculum, as lessons on leadership, quality management and patient counselling shall become part of the game, concluded Martina. She especially enjoyed playing a patient during the PG in Groningen and is determined to involve all her colleagues into the PG in Leiden.