Revised procedure for overseas accreditation of foreign qualifications
The Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has agreed a revised procedure under which pharmacists who have qualified in countries with education and training requirements similar to those in the UK can demonstrate, within the jurisdiction in which they are licensed to practise, their suitability to enter preregistration training in the UK.
At the June Council
meeting, the Council was asked to agree proposals
for revised procedures that allow overseas pharmacist assessment programmes
to be delivered outside Britain. The Society’s head of accreditation,
Damian Day, reminded the Council that the standard routine for overseas
pharmacists who are not registered within the European Economic Area
is a one-year full-time conversion course in the UK, followed by the
preregistration year and the registration examination. The two-year process
costs about £20,000 and uses up a year of a work visa.
At the end of 2005, the Education Committee proposed an alternative for
overseas registrants whose education and training is similar to that
in Britain. It comprises a one-year
conversion course in the pharmacist’s
own country, followed by the preregistration year and the registration
examination (PJ, 17 December 2005, p759). The proposal had been generally
welcomed, but with lukewarm support for the one-year preregistration
training period. The matters had been reviewed and the Education Committee
now proposed that, after a short in-country course, candidates assessed
as suitable could undergo a preregistration training period as short
as three months.
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal