Learning with other health professions in the United Kingdom MPharm degree:Multidisciplinary and placement education

This paper reviews the approach to multidisciplinary and placement education in UK schools of pharmacy. The methodology involved triangulation of course documentation, staff interviews and a final year student survey. Staff members were supportive of multidisciplinary learning. The advantages were development of a wider appreciation of the students? future professional role and better understanding of the roles of other professional groups. The barriers were logistics (student numbers; multiple sites; different timetables), the achievement of balanced numbers between disciplines and engagement of students from all participating disciplines. Placement education was offered by all schools, predominantly in hospital settings. Key problems were funding and the lack of staff resources. Currently, multidisciplinary learning within the UK for pharmacy students is inadequate and is coupled with relatively low levels of placement education. In order for things to change, there should be a review of funding and support from government and the private sector employers.

Why critical pedagogy and popular education matter today

Few today doubt that English Higher Education (HE), like the wider world in which it is located, is in crisis. This is, in part, an economic crisis, as the government response to the current recession seems to be that of introducing the kind of neoliberal ‘shock doctrine’ (Klein 2007) or ‘shock therapy’ (Harvey 2005) that previously resulted in swingeing cuts in public services in Southern nations. Our aim in producing this volume is that these contributions help develop a collective response to the seeming limits of these conditions. We view the strength of these contributions in part as providing palpable evidence of how we and our colleagues are acting with critical hope under current conditions so that we might encourage others to work with us to build, together, more progressive formal and informal education systems that address and seek to redress multiple injustices of the world today.