Inspiring Young Learners To Understand Medicines For Children

4 May 2020

Year 6 Children at Oaklands Primary School in Kent were inspired and excited by a ‘Making Medicines for Children’ workshop delivered by Dr Smita Salunke and Elisa Alessandrini, on 30th January 2020 as a part of Science Week at school.

It provided an excellent way of engaging children with enjoyable hands-on activity of making medicines and supporting them in understanding the science around it.

Smita Salunke's school visit to teach primary students about medicines

The workshop ranged from giving children the chance to understand what are medicines, different forms of medicines, and even trying their hand as formulation scientists with home baking ingredients! The children learned how to make different forms of medicines such as capsules, liquids and enjoyed fun activities such as ‘Guess the Flavour’ in the medicine and swallowing different sized sweets. Overall, this gave them the opportunity to experience what life as a scientist is like! There was a "Make and Take Home" for everyone.

Additionally, it provided them with an opportunity to understand the unique needs of children, to understand that children are not small adults, and why size and taste matters.

The reaction of one child to one of the activities was: ‘Swallowing a big tablet is very difficult, can’t we dissolve it in water and drink it? Trying swallowing different sizes of sweeties was really good fun!’’

Dr Salunke said: “We had a short Q&A with the children to understand how easy they find using devices (e.g. spoons, syringes) to take their medicines and we were impressed with how much they took in and the suggestions on improving instructions such as ‘show and tell’; having pictures on how to use the device”

The session ended with very positive feedback from a delighted Miss Collins, Year 6 class teacher. "The children really enjoyed the session and were so interested and engaged in the different activities around making medicines. They know that you need patience, observational skills, questioning and team work in order to succeed’

Special thanks to Mr Barry Symons, the head teacher, for supporting us with our academic research on use of devices (UCL Research Ethics Committee Approval ID Number 4612/016), and parents for filling in the survey and providing the consent for their children to participate in a Q&A on use of administration devices for children. Your answers will help us find ways of making the devices more user friendly.

Further information:

Contact:

Dr Smita Salunke - Staff Profile

Research Associate

Chief Scientific Officer, European Paediatric Formulation Initiative

Image Credit:

Oaklands School