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PharmAware mainly focuses on key pharmaceutical issues that affects us as healthcare professionals and patients in the UK.
The PharmAware World
Bristol
The University Action Group has been very active and
made significant progress. Our aim is to integrate PharmAware into the core
curriculum so that the topic will be available and compulsory for all medical
students in Bristol. There is now a compulsory lecture for 5th years run by Rhona McDonald, which will hopefully be incorporating it into the ethics curriculum.
They
have also been busy with publicity around Novartis' challenging of
Indian patent laws, which threatens its ability to produce and
distribute cheaper drugs internationally, particularly to the
developing world. They run regular film and speaker events.
Leeds
Check out the news from Leeds in the student lancet!
A two-week SSC project entitled “The
Pharmaceutical Industry and Health” ran in Leeds just before Christmas. Fifteen
students from the 2rd and 3rd years of the medicine course took part. Over the
two weeks there were workshops on how new drugs are introduced, the
pharmaceutical industry, humanitarian health issues, critical appraisal of
scientific papers and how UK doctors interact with the pharmaceutical industry.
Leicester
Leicester had a debate entitled 'This house believes restricted
drug formularies damage patient health care' between two of our teaching staff. There were some great topics raised
and everyone involved learnt a lot.
The University Action Group has been very active and made significant progress. Our aim is to integrate PharmAware into the core curriculum so that the topic will be available and compulsory for all medical students in Bristol. There is now a compulsory lecture for 5th years run by Rhona McDonald, which will hopefully be incorporating it into the ethics curriculum.
They have also been busy with publicity around Novartis' challenging of Indian patent laws, which threatens its ability to produce and distribute cheaper drugs internationally, particularly to the developing world. They run regular film and speaker events.
Leicester
Leicester had a debate entitled 'This house believes restricted drug formularies damage patient health care' between two of our teaching staff. There were some great topics raised and everyone involved learnt a lot.
PharmAware's 2nd AGM October 13-14th 2007
PharmAware's second AGM took place on the 13th + 14th of October. Members came to UCL from around the country to learn about both national and international pharmaceutical issues. A big thank you goes out to Rory O'Connor, Rhona from the Student Lancet and James from People and planet for coming along and giving us a lot to think about. Have a read of the minutes and find out about the plans for campaigns and new committee members. Have a look at the picture gallery for photos from the event.
UK Campaign
The aim of the campaign is to create ‘PharmAware’ teaching hospitals, where interactions between health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry are strictly regulated. We hope to achieve this by writing a set of guidelines in consultation with key people within the trust and medical school, which will go on to be implemented as trust policy. This approach has already been achieved at three teaching hospitals some of the USAs most prestigious medical schools (Yale, Stanford, UPenn), whose experiences will be useful to the UK campaign.
The
first stage in the policy process is to become familiar with all the
existing guidelines relating to conflict of interest and interactions with the
pharmaceutical industry. The Leeds working
group is currently in the process of assimilating practice guidelines and other
relevant literature from the World Health Organisation, the British Medical
Association, the General Medical Council, the National Institute for Clinical
Excellence (NICE), the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
(ABPI) and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
The
groundwork being done at Leeds will be useful to UK campaign groups at all branches,
however, each branch must eventually take responsibility for researching their
own trust guidelines and identifying the appropriate channels to implement the
policy in their trust. The policy writing process will be done in consultation
with the relevant committee members at all Pharmaware branches.
It is also important to raise the profile of the UK campaign within the local trust for each branch, and sensitise people to the fact that a new policy is needed. At Leeds this will be achieved through a Bristol-style debate to which key representatives from the trust, the medical school, the pharmaceutical industry and students will be invited.
University Curricula
This area of Pharmaware activity is concerned with placing pressure on
University Medical Schools to ensure that there is adequate,
informative and stimulating teaching provided on their curriculum
regarding the issues of Big Pharma practice, ethical interaction
between doctors/medical students and ethical & sensible prescribing
practices.
There are many ways to fit these topics into curricula and there have already been some tremendous successes. Leeds have recently (Winter 2007) staged a SSC/SSM (Student-Selected Component/ Special Study Module) whilst other groups have sought greater representation of such topics on their core medical curriculum.