Distant Learning

Course overview:

This course comprehensively deals with all aspects relevant to the diagnosis and management of people with hypertension. Important facets covered include:

How to accurately measure blood pressure irrespective of the device used and the environment where measurements are taken.

• Hypertension within the context of overall cardiovascular risk and its assessment.
• Choice of antihypertensive agent depending on outcome data and where co-morbidities exist.
• Treatment of hypertension in special populations, e.g. pregnancy, diabetes, older people, post stroke and in renal impairment.
• Patient compliance with hypertensive therapy.

Course Overview:
The overall aim of the course is to help you to evaluate, discuss and competently integrate into your daily practice an understanding of complementary and alternative therapies.

Having completed this course, you should be able to:

*define and explain the underpinning philosophy of complementary and alternative medicines and put this into context with conventional medicines;
*outline the current regulatory and safety issues in relation to complementary and alternative medicines practitioners and products;
*describe the current evidence base for the use of complementary medicines and therapies;
*advise on the use of OTC complementary medicine for common ailments.
*identify, record and report potential adverse drug reactions and interactions between complementary and conventional medicines.
*identify quality and safety issues in relation to complementary medicines.

Learning hours: 10

The aim of this course is to examine the more community encountered neurological diseases emphasising a cost-effective and rational approach to therapy with a view to improving patient care.

The course will describe the pathophysiology of epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and motor neuron disease. The course will also evaluate the available drug therapy and indicate the principles for rational drug choice for individual patients. In addition the course will allow you to identify the advice and information needs of patients and their families. This will enable them to manage their conditions and medications more effectively and identify symptoms indicative of an improving or worsening clinical state.

Learning hours: 8/10

Course Title:
Chronic Respiratory Disorders

Course Overview:
This course focuses on Chronic Obstructive Pulmary Diseases (COPD) and asthma. Other chronic respiratory conditions are reviewed briefly and the reader is directed to other sources of information to investigate further.

The course is designed for pharmacists in community, primary and secondary care, wishing to extend their professional practice in medicine management for people with COPD or asthma.

Having completed this course you should be able to identify risk factors associated with the development of asthma/COPD, review the underlying pathophysiology of asthma/COPD and how these affect normal physiological functioning, and effectively monitor patients with respiratory diseases. The course will also enable you to describe best practice in managing patients with asthma and COPD, using both drug therapy and non-pharmacological methods, and to demonstrate the correct use of inhaler devices.

This course is accompanied by a CD-Rom containing guidelines and peak-flow charts. In addition, a clinical record for a patient with COPD demonstrates the management of this condition.

Course overview:
The aim of this resource is to provide you with background information on basic nutrition.

We realise that pharmacists' knowledge of nutrition varies enormously. It is likely that relatively few of us know more than a well-informed lay person, because our education and training quite rightly focuses on medicines.

This resource contains, amongst other things, basic facts about proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.

Having completed this course you should be able to:

* identify the six major groups of essential nutrients and explain their role in the diet;
* explain how and where in the gastrointestinal tract nutrients are digested and absorbed;
* understand the principles of a healthy diet;
* tailor nutritional information to meet the needs of people throughout their life;
* tailor nutritional information to meet the needs of people with various diseases;
* identify the role of food supplements.

An open learning course for pharmacists

Course Overview:
This course is designed to help pharmacists to evaluate, discuss and competently integrate into their daily practice the way in which nutrition and dietary therapy play a part in a patient-centred approach to healthcare.

The course consists of two main parts:

- a booklet providing background information on basic nutrition, together with lists of useful resourse material, and

- a series of case studies and exercises.

Course Overview:

Aim To support pharmacists in implementing an effective adverse drug reaction reporting system.

Learning outcomes

• understanding the yellow card scheme;
• defining what adverse drug reactions are, why they are a problem and who may be at risk;
• understanding the common ADRs affecting the different body systems and how collecting information on ADRs can improve patient safety;
• understanding the epidemiology of ADRs and how to identify them in practice;
• communicating effectively with people about ADRs and explaining possible risks;
• helping people to identify and report ADRs;
• identifying useful information sources on ADRs.