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Pharmacy placements

We believe exposure to the professional working environment is crucial for your future employability. That’s why our pharmacy courses involve a significant amount of placement content in each year of the course, right from the start, meaning you gain essential work experience throughout.

During your studies, you will have the opportunity to implement the knowledge and practical experience learned during your campus-based teaching in hospital, community pharmacy and primary care settings. These carefully designed applied activities and learning tasks will provide you with the confidence to move into your professional life upon graduating.

Placement relationships

In addition to your early placement experience, you’ll benefit from our relationships with community pharmacy chains in the Midlands who provide our students with many placement opportunities. We also have close relationships with both primary care organisations and hospital, including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital located right next door to the Medical School.

Prime location

Your opportunities for contact with a wide range of patients and a variety of health conditions are exceptional. By choosing to study Pharmacy at Birmingham you'll be studying in one of the largest healthcare regions in the UK, with a diverse population of over 5 million.

Your teaching will take place in the Medical School and the Robert Aitken Building, both of which are located next door to one of the largest general hospitals in Europe, the Queen Elizabeth (QE). The QE offers a number of placement opportunities to our students along with many other major hospital trusts that are within a few miles from the university. With a mainline train station right outside the Medical School and excellent public transport links, placements throughout the wider region are also utilised to give a broad experience of healthcare.

Opportunity to specialise

During your fourth year you'll be able to fulfil your own personal learning objectives. You will have the exciting opportunity to explore pharmacy specialism and design a personally tailored placement to support your professional development.

Foundation training year

Your placement experience gained throughout your studies will provide you with the essential work experience to help thrive within your Foundation year after graduation.

Enhancing our placements

We are always seeking to improve and enhance the placement experience for students. A review was carried out in 2023-24 to consider the operation of the existing placement programme, in the light of a planned increase in student numbers and evolution of the curriculum to meet the new national requirements for graduate pharmacists.

The research aimed to investigate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with the MPharm student placement programme from a placement supervisor and student perspective. It explored differences between what both supervisors and students intended and experienced within a variety of placement sectors; and it identified barriers and/or challenges associated with the successful growth of the MPharm. The review identified areas for improvements and made suggestions on educational interventions, programme, operational or training development needs.

The review made five final recommendations for improvements that the MPharm team could make which are outlined below, alongside the progress being made to date:

  1. Develop a new digital system to meet the operational needs of supporting, managing and coordinating placement provision. Progress: The School of Pharmacy has implemented a new system to facilitate coordination of placements and support our placement assessment framework
  1. Provide online ‘bite size’ training in how to support, coach, mentor, assess and provide feedback to placement students. Progress: The School of Pharmacy has developed bespoke online training to support placement supervisors in delivering key aspects of the placement programme. In addition, some bite-size courses have been developed for students to help support their development through our placement programme.
  1. Establish additional regular training on the structure, learning outcomes and professional practice expectations for MPharm supervisors. Progress: The School of Pharmacy holds regular provider training and engagement events, as well as the provision of clear training materials for supervisors.
  1. Provide summary resources that provide a ‘supervisor crib sheet’ for specific pharmacy tasks and clinical activities specific to each placement sector. Progress: The School of Pharmacy has co-designed a set of activities with supervisors and developed a package to share with providers to support placement delivery.
  1. Develop an online community space where supervisors can share ideas, raise questions and get advice from other UoB MPharm placement supervisors. Progress: The School of Pharmacy now has on online forum, where supervisors can discuss key topics and share areas of best practice.

Access the full report (PDF, 4.87MB)