Pharmacists need to participate in continuing professional development (CPD). It is inescapable. Although it may be nearly two years before CPD becomes mandatory, the more the CPD process becomes integral to your practice, the easier you will find it when you have to demonstrate that you are doing it.

The Pharmaceutical Journal has always sought to keep its readers up to date with changes in pharmacy practice by providing information on clinical developments and changes in the law and technology relevant to pharmacy. Indeed you might use any page in The Journal to fulfil one or more of your identified CPD needs.

However, we are now aiming to provide you with additional help to facilitate your CPD. Each week The Journal will publish an article that you might consider using to help meet your CPD needs. As you will see from this week's issue, we have changed the presentation of the articles to incorporate the principles of the CPD cycle. This includes:

• Questions to help you to identify gaps in your knowledge. However, you should also consider how using the article will be of value to your practice.

• Practice points. As we all know it is easy to read an article but make little use of it in practice, so our action box is aimed at helping you consider issues which you might take further.

If you do choose to use a Journal article for CPD, we recommend that you evaluate your development and record your resp-onses to each stage of the CPD cycle.

We are not seeking to be prescriptive. It is up to you to decide on your own CPD needs and the ways in which you meet these needs.

A new scheme

In addition, we are offering 500 pharmacists the opportunity to have their CPD accredited by the College of Pharmacy Practice free of charge. If you decide to join our pilot, it will involve:

• Reading CPD articles in The Journal over 13 weeks (from May 4 to July 27 inclusive) when CPD needs are identified

• Answering 10 multiple choice questions which will be based on the articles published during the quarter

• Completing one practical exercise from a choice of three (also based on the articles) and producing a 500-word summary of your work on this exercise

• Sending your MCQ answers and 500-word summary to the College of Pharmacy Practice for assessment

Logistics

To take part in the scheme, you will need to register with The Journal by 1 July 2002. Fill out the coupon (PDF* 50K) and send it to:

CPD
The Pharmaceutical Journal,
1 Lambeth High Street,
London SE1 7JN

Fax: 020 7572 2504

Alternatively you can register for the pilot here.

We will post you the MCQs, the choice of exercises and an answer form at the end of July. You should submit your answers to the MCQs and your exercise summary to the College of Pharmacy Practice by 16 September 2002. This can be done electronically via the College's website or by using the form we provide.

Accreditation

On successful completion of both MCQs and one exercise, you will be sent a certificate by the College of Pharmacy Practice as further evidence of your participation. It must be emphasised that participation in the pilot is an end in itself. The accreditation will indicate that your participation has been satisfactory. It will not indicate hours spent or whether your summary was right or wrong. Model summaries will be published in The Journal and on-line.

The topics to be included in our 13-week series are obesity, managing meetings, how to read clinical papers, presentation skills, staff training and herbal remedies.

Feedback

Both the accreditation scheme and the layout of the articles are part of an ongoing pilot, which will be repeated for a further 13-week period from September to November. The aim is to discover whether or not pharmacists need further guidance in participating in CPD.

We would therefore welcome your feedback on any aspect of the new scheme from layout to ideas for topics to be covered in the future. Any queries about or feedback on The Journal's CPD pilot should be sent to:

Lin-Nam Wang
The Pharmaceutical Journal
1 Lambeth High Street
London SE1 7JN

Tel +44 (0) 20 7572 2413

Email lin-nam.wang@pharmj.org.uk