The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7159 p171-175
4 August 2001

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Society News summary

Launch of the Society’s new preregistration training scheme

The Society’s new preregistration training scheme incorporates changes both to the training and assessment standards for trainees and to the accreditation requirements for tutors.

For trainees, the Society has developed new standards of performance to achieve. The aim is to provide a more patient-focused preparation for practice, to reflect the changing nature of pharmacy and to encourage effective working between the hospital and community sectors. The standards have a strong emphasis on the trainee’s professional behaviour, self-management and patient focus.

Dual experience

To achieve the new standards, trainees must experience both hospital and community practice during their training year (this applies also to trainees who spend part of their training in the pharmaceutical industry). For the present this is defined as a minimum of two weeks in the patient-care setting different from the trainee’s main training site.

However, not all trainees will experience both sectors in the first year of the new scheme because practical difficulties must be overcome in arranging dual experience for all trainees. The Society is working with employers to address these difficulties and hopes that dual experience can be achieved for all trainees by the 2003–04 training year.

For the training year 2001–02, those trainees who do not have a cross-sector placement during their year will work to the existing preregistration competences. Neither of the programmes is treated by the Society as superior to the other for the purposes of registration.

The registration examination syllabus has been revised and updated for examinations in 2002 onwards. The criteria for a pass have also been amended. All trainees will have to develop their knowledge according to the new syllabus and pass criteria, irrespective of the training and performance assessment programme they have undertaken.

Tutor training

A major change for preregistration tutors is that they are no longer required to attend a face-to-face seminar to prepare them for the tutoring role. Instead, the Society has produced a distance learning workbook for tutors, from which the tutor can select activities to suit his or her own learning needs and prior experience, both in preparation for the training year and to facilitate training during the year.

Another important innovation related to tutoring is the development of a set of tutor competencies. Tutors are expected to use these to help identify their own development needs as tutors so that they can address them as part of their continuing professional development.

A further innovation is a requirement for each tutor to sign and send to the Society an “Agreement to tutor” document. On this the tutor declares his or her commitment to the tutoring role and meeting the Society’s requirements, to using the tutor workbook and to undertaking continuing professional development.

Contract

In addition, the preregistration tutor and trainee are now required to sign a “learning contract” at the start of their training period together, to declare their commitment to meeting their own responsibilities and to promote awareness of each other’s rights within the training context.

For the future the Society is keen to encourage innovative training programmes from training providers (provided that they meet the overall ethos of the new requirements). For example, programmes are increasingly being organised to include a period in primary care pharmacy.

Training materials

To support its new training requirements, the Society has produced a new set of training materials. All tutors are sent an information pack in addition to the distance learning workbook. Trainees undertaking the performance standards programme are sent a workbook and a portfolio in which they collect and record their evidence of competence and all the documentation that they must send to the Society. Trainees undertaking the competences programme are sent an updated version of the preregistration training manual.

Further information about the new programme and copies of the training materials (PDF format) can be found on the Society’s website.

Tutor discussion group

Tutors and others involved in preregistration training can now also communicate with each other through an e-mail discussion group established by John Hampson, a training pharmacist in Wales. Those wishing to join should send an e-mail to jiscmail@jiscmail.ac.uk containing: first line, “join prereg-pharmacists firstname secondname”; second line, “--”. Once the group has been running for a few weeks, messages will be archived for people to view on the website www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/prereg-pharmacists.html.

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