The School of Pharmacy and Nutrition of the University of Navarra is going to implement, in a pioneer way in the teaching of Pharmacy in Spain, the role playing technique with students of 4th year of Pharmacy.

This technique consists of putting the student in a real status through the development of a practical case where the student acts as a pharmacist and must give a solution to the patient who comes to the pharmacy with a problem. At the moment, this technique is part of three subjects in the 4th year of Pharmacy: Pharmacology, Pharmaceutical Care and Biochemistry . "What we do is evaluate the students' knowledge in these three subjects through a case," explains Idoya Beltrán, team member of development at School.

Each role involves student, a patient -previously prepared to develop a specific case- and the evaluator, who is a pharmacist from School.

In the implementation of this new method professor 6 groups with 9 students each have participated. "Our goal is to improve this technique and use it again next year", emphasizes Idoya Beltrán.

The protagonists value the work of role playing.

Pablo Rosas (4th year of Pharmacy + Nutrition), one of the students who participated in this first role playing, considers that it is "an interesting and very interesting idea internship, both because it integrates much of the knowledge acquired during the degree program, and because experience is gained on how to act in a pharmacy office or in supervised stays". Pablo also adds that "it would be ideal to work on more cases throughout the course, to reinforce habits. In addition, in our case, having a pharmacy on the 5th floor of our building financial aid helps us a lot to get to status".

In the opinion of Javier Roldán Yanguas (4th year of Pharmacy), role playing "is a good method for evaluating knowledge, since it helps you financial aid to relate the contents of the different subjects and sample the usefulness they have in the daily work ". "It is a way to approach the work environment and relate to the environment, since these are problems that can happen to you in any pharmacy. In this sense, this method will help you financial aid to express yourself more easily and correctly," he stresses.

Finally, the student stresses that the most complicated thing was to apply what was studied without time to think, "since you have to give an immediate solution to the supposed patient. You can't just keep thinking without saying anything...".