Innovation and Creativity in Pharmacy Workplace Learning

Dear Colleagues,

Workplace learning or placement has an established role in pharmacy education. Learning in an authentic pharmacy environment assists students with professional identity development, the application of skills such as counseling and patient education, and experiencing the ways that professional services are offered by the pharmacy. This helps graduates to be work-ready and job-ready as they develop profession-specific skills and the oft-called “soft skills” valued by employers, such as working successfully in a team, adaptability, resilience, self-leadership, and effective time management. Increasingly, there is a recognition, and an anticipation, that innovation and creativity skills will be brought to their future employment sites by young graduates to help them negotiate the challenges of the current and future workplaces.
However, in the 21st Century, the scope of practice of pharmacists is changing, as is the adoption of technology in practice, such as the use of robotic dispensing systems. Further, in many areas, demand for workplace learning exceeds supply, and authentic workplace learning is becoming more and more challenging to provide. Increasingly, pharmacy educators are seeking innovative approaches to workplace learning to address these issues. Some of these include simulation pre-placement activities and virtual reality experiences.

We invite you to share your approaches in developing innovative workplace learning experiences for your students, including those enablers that facilitated your new approaches and the challenges that you had to overcome. We hope this Special Issue will inspire you and other educators to share your own creative solutions, approaches and innovations to enhance student learning and educational outcomes globally.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Maree Donna Simpson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Creativity
• Innovation
• Workplace learning
• Work-integrated learning
• Virtual
• Global
• Simulation