Month: November 2025

We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be holding a symposium at Pharmacology 2025! 

 

The symposium, “Delivering novel prescribing education solutions via the BPS Assessment platform” will bring together leading voices in prescribing education.

 

 If you’re coming to Pharmacology 2025 then make sure you catch us on Thursday 18th December 2025 9:00am-10:45am in the main auditorium. If you haven’t already secured your ticket, registration is available here

 

What we will be talking about

The BPS Assessment platform is a bespoke and robust learning environment capable of hosting the development and delivery of eLearning materials and assessments in the fields of prescribing and pharmacology. 

 

Prescribing and supervising the use of medicines is critical to delivering high quality healthcare, in both hospitals and primary care. Given these complexities, it is perhaps not surprising that poor prescribing is common, with around 5 to 10% of UK prescriptions containing an error. In these circumstances it is important that undergraduate and continuing education provides the training to ensure that all prescribers meet minimum standards of prescribing competency. 

 

With that challenge in mind, the BPS built a bespoke platform to support the hosting of the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) on behalf of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) and UK Medical Schools. 

 

In recent years, it has been developed to provide additional tools for users to support newer approaches to education. This symposium will describe some of those new developments and how the platform is being used to service the needs of prescribing training for postgraduate doctors, undergraduate medical students and pharmacists.

 

We hope that the presentations will inspire other BPS members and attendees to see how the platform could be deployed in their own teaching and assessment.

 

Our speakers

Chair: Professor Simon Maxwell

 

Talk 1: The BPSA platform: new innovations on an established platform – Mr Peter Wright, BPS Assessment

 

Talk 2: Supporting prescribing training for NHS foundation doctors in Ayrshire and Arran Health Board – Sarah McDonald, NHS Ayrshire and Arran; Frances Bendall, NHS Ayrshire and Arran

 

Talk 3: Supporting prescribing training for undergraduate medical students at the University of Manchester – Dr Kurt Wilson and Dr Hiten Mitha, University of Manchester

 

Talk 4: Prescribing skills and the PSA: MPharm students’ perspectives – Clare Murray, Queen’s University, Belfast.

 

Meet with our team

Want to request some dedicated time with our team while you’re at Pharmacology 2025? Book a meeting with us here to ensure you get a one to one session so we can answer your questions and discuss anything you’d like to know on the day.

 

Med Safety Week runs from 3rd to 9th November 2025, marking its tenth anniversary as a global campaign to raise awareness about reporting suspected adverse drug reactions. This year’s theme “we all have the power to make medicines safer” is particularly relevant for medical students, trainees, educators and practising prescribers.

 

Here’s a statistic that might come as a surprise, less than 10% of adverse drug reactions are ever reported. That’s a significant gap when you consider that pharmacovigilance systems rely heavily on these reports to identify safety signals, update prescribing guidance and protect patients.

 

Every unreported adverse drug reaction (ADR) represents a missed opportunity to build a fuller picture of how medicines perform in real-world settings, across diverse patient populations and over extended periods.

 

Using Med Safety Week as a teaching opportunity

Med Safety Week provides a timely reminder to embed pharmacovigilance into your curriculum in a way that feels relevant.

 

When presenting clinical scenarios, you could include opportunities for students to identify potential adverse reactions and discuss whether they’d warrant a report. The MHRA publishes case studies showing how Yellow Card reports have led to regulatory action which can be used as teaching materials to demonstrate the impact of pharmacovigilance in the real world.

 

Ask students to consider questions such as: Have they witnessed a suspected ADR during clinical placements? Was it reported? If not, why not? What were the barriers? This kind of reflective discussion helps identify the practical challenges that lead to underreporting.

 

For students preparing for their prescribing exams The Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) includes questions on adverse drug reactions and understanding when and how to report suspected side effects is a core competency expected of newly qualified prescribers.

 

Resources for Med Safety Week

The MHRA and Uppsala Monitoring Centre provide free campaign materials that can be used in lectures, shared on social media or displayed in teaching spaces who-umc.org/medsafetyweek

 

BPSA’s own MHRA Yellow Card scheme assessment is a free to use resource that has been developed in partnership with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the British Pharmacological Society (BPS). It provides structured learning across two modules, covering the role of the MHRA and scenario-based case studies on reporting adverse incidents. It’s available through our portal and takes approximately one hour to complete portal.bpsassessment.com/product/yellow-card-scheme

 

Useful links

• MHRA Yellow Card scheme: yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk
• Medical Safety Week campaign materials: who-umc.org/medsafetyweek
• MHRA Yellow Card scheme assessment: portal.bpsassessment.com/product/yellow-card-scheme
• BPS Assessment resources: portal.bpsassessment.com