MyDispense – Shaping Pharmacy Education

Reimagine Education Bronze Award in E-Learning category

Considered ‘the Oscars of Education’, Reimagine Education is an international competition that rewards innovative initiatives aimed at enhancing student learning and employability. In 2018, MyDispense took home the Silver Award in the Life Sciences and Medicine category and the Bronze Award in the E-Learning category.

Shaping Pharmacy Education

MyDispense is an online pharmacy simulation that allows students to develop and practise their dispensing skills. It provides a safe environment in which they may make mistakes without experiencing the serious consequences of practicing in the real world.

Safe Dispensing Environment

Through highly interactive dispensing exercises, MyDispense allows students to develop skills and confidence in safe, best-practice dispensing of pharmaceutical products.

Modern Dispensing Practice

The application features a dispensing system with many features of commercial dispensing programs to give students an authentic experience in modern dispensing practice. At the end of each exercise, students receive rich, contextual feedback on their dispensing performance.

Full Dispensing experience

The web application supports a total dispensing experience, from initial communication with the patient and prescriber to professional advice when handing medicines to patients.

No physical restrictions

The MyDispense environment utilises virtual representations of patients, barcodes, labels and products. There is no requirement for a physical space with label printers and shelves full of empty product boxes. This means that students have no restrictions on their access to dispensing exercises.

Institutions Using MyDispense

Exercises Completed

Virtual Prescribers

Medications in Database

Virtual Patients

Customizable Features

MyDispense has a wide array of features to simulate most aspects of actions community pharmacists practice every day. These features are customisable based on your region.

Dispense Screen

Developed to simulate most aspects of real life dispensing applications, the dispense screen is the heart of dispensing exercises. It is where students view patient information such as dispensing history and patient notes. They also create and print out dispensing labels on this screen.

Product Selection

MyDispense has over 2,000 medications available for use in exercises, separated into RX and OTC medications. All medications may be set as being Branded or Generic, allowing students to choose between them. UK and US MyDispense sites include an optional pill counting activity, requiring students to manually count pills into a bottle.

Fact Finding

MyDispense exercises are non-linear and allow students to query the patient or prescriber to discover crucial information. The information gleaned from interacting with the patient or prescriber allows the student to make important decisions about the patient's care.

Admin Interface

MyDispense is an effective learning tool due to its powerful administrator interface. Administrators can create endless scenarios for students using exercise creation tools along with creation of new patients, prescribers and medications. The exam manager interface allows for markers to mark student assessments and export marks out to a LMS.

Feedback

Upon completion of exercises, students receive immediate feedback on their performance. Students may reflect on their decisions and reset the exercise and start again. Students can also export their feedback in PDF format so they can reflect on their performance if they complete the exercise again.

User Management

MyDispense supports different types of administrator users. Instructors can edit units, creating tutorials, exercises, assessments and managing students in a unit. Markers can mark assessments and do not have access to editing units. Students can be assigned to student groups which can then be linked to tutorials.