Keynote presentation 4: The making of a safe and effective prescriber: Rethinking prescribing education for a changing world
Tracks
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
| Wednesday, July 15, 2026 |
| 4:45 PM - 5:30 PM |
| Sponsored By: |
Overview
British Pharmacological Society (BPS) Lecture I Prof Simon Maxwell
Details
Prescribing medicines is one of the most complex and safety-critical tasks undertaken by healthcare professionals. Despite advances in therapeutics, prescribing errors remain common across healthcare systems, highlighting the continuing need for effective pharmacology education and robust assessment of prescribing competence. Traditional pharmacology teaching, often focused on knowledge acquisition, is increasingly being complemented by approaches that emphasise practical prescribing skills, clinical reasoning and active learning. This keynote will examine how pharmacology education can evolve to better prepare both medical and non-medical prescribers for real-world practice.
The lecture will discuss contemporary approaches to prescribing education, including case-based learning, simulation and digital learning environments that support applied therapeutics. Particular attention will be given to the development of the UK Prescribing Safety Assessment, which provides a national summative test of prescribing competence. While such assessments play an important role in establishing minimum standards, they represent only one component of a broader evaluation framework that should also include workplace-based assessment and supervised clinical practice. Finally, the talk will consider future directions in prescribing education, including the influence of artificial intelligence, clinical decision support systems and digitally enabled prescribing environments, and the implications for preparing safe and effective prescribers worldwide.
Speaker
Prof Simon Maxwell
BPS
The making of a safe and effective prescriber: Rethinking prescribing education for a changing world
Biography
Simon Maxwell is Professor of Student Learning/Clinical Pharmacology and Prescribing at the University of Edinburgh, where he has led in developing e-Learning strategies to support education in this area. He is also the Director of the University’s Masters in Internal Medicine programme. His clinical responsibilities include supervision of acute medical admissions and the management of outpatients at increased cardiovascular risk. He was formerly Vice-President of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) and is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in London and Edinburgh and of the Higher Education Academy. He led the development of and is Medical Director of the Prescribing Safety Assessment, a joint initiative by the BPS and Medical Schools Council delivering a national assessment of prescribing for all UK medical students. This process has now been adopted in several other countries. He is co-lead for the Pharmacology Education Project (PEP), an IUPHAR initiative to provide freely accessible learning materials for students of the pharmacological sciences in resource-poor countries.
