Branching out into continuing professional development
By spring 2007, continuing professional development (CPD) will be mandatory for all practising pharmacists. The bottom line is that if practising pharmacists do not have CPD record to submit to the Society on request, they risk being removed from the Register, rendering them unable to practise.
As in other health care professions facing the introduction of mandatory
CPD, many members are still worried about it, wondering how they will
find time to fit it into their busy daily lives. To combat these issues
and to help members become more accustomed to CPD, the Society set up
a focus group in 2003 to look at how branches could support members with
their future CPD requirements. As a result, in 2004, 21 part-time CPD
facilitators were recruited to support individual branches to help members
better understand and manage their CPD requirements.
Alongside the new branch CPD facilitators, a lead facilitator, Sue Jones,
was appointed to act as the liaison between the facilitators and the
Society’s membership team. She is a pharmacy practice lecturer
from King’s College London and a former community pharmacist. As
part of her PhD thesis, she is researching some issues surrounding CPD
and the implications for the profession. She says: “When CPD started
to register on people’s radars due to the changes in fee structure
and increasing publicity, it became obvious that the Society would be
expected to support pharmacists in the changeover from to a mandatory
framework. This led to the inception of a network of facilitators who
visited branches to help to demystify the process of CPD and its recording.
My role has been to assist with the implementation of the project and
ultimately to enable members to understand how having a formal system
of CPD recording can help them in their professional lives. Pharmacists
have always done CPD but many were not formally recording their learning.
The branch meetings that have been run have been extremely well attended
and have led to pharmacists being less worried about the change to mandatory
CPD.”
The branch CPD facilitators, who were all pharmacists, liaised with between
four and eight branches each. The Society’s 130 branches were each
able to run two facilitated meetings during the year. In these meetings,
the facilitators used a specially devised CPD tool-kit that included
a number of 30-minute CPD-related modules, chosen to reflect the level
of experience of individual branch members. The activities were designed
to be interactive and enjoyable, while showing examples of CPD-related
work and the quickest and easiest methods of recording activity.
Peter Wilson, head of the Society’s postregistration division,
says of the meetings: “The facilitators helped many pharmacists
get to grips with the process of CPD at a time when it was new and, for
some, intimidating. After the sessions members genuinely felt more confident
in making their CPD entries and were overall less anxious about the whole
subject. Many welcomed follow-up CPD meetings where we concentrated on
the actual recording of CPD online and identified potential subject areas
for real CPD records.”
Members’ concerns mainly centred around how to balance the time
required to produce sufficient entries. The meetings stimulated a great
deal of discussion and it was found to be a constructive way to share
both good and bad experiences with very diverse groups.
David Wildman, a Co-op community pharmacist who chairs the Northamptonshire
branch, has organised CPD meetings for his branch members. He says: “Although
I have been doing CPD for many years now I can see that many members
are scared to death of it, mainly because they cannot see how they will
find time to fit it into their daily working lives. However, the myths
of CPD were quickly dispelled when we had a speaker at one meeting who
explained that it is actually quite easy to keep your records up to date.
We then had another meeting where Diane Leakey, one of the Society’s
CPD facilitators, did a brilliant presentation that opened everybody’s
eyes. She did a live log-in to her own CPD record and showed us examples
of the kind of things she records in her portfolio. The members were
genuinely taken aback that it was so easy and afterwards most people
said that they were actually doing CPD already but in different formats — they
just hadn’t realised it.”
Since the project started in 2004 there have been more than 200 facilitated
CPD branch meetings helping over 6,000 members to familiarise themselves
with the CPD process. Feedback shows that the vast majority of branch
members found CPD meetings to be a valuable addition to the branch programme.
They were seen as interesting, informative and reassuring to members,
who welcomed the idea of sharing experiences on CPD.
Furthermore, the meetings encouraged group participation and drew in
many more members who would not normally attend branch meetings. The
Northamptonshire branch, for example, has a turnout of at least 50 people
whenever CPD is on the agenda.
To improve its CPD resources for members further, in April 2005 the Society
upgraded its CPD Desktop software, compiled CPD case studies to provide
examples of real CPD records from the main sectors of practice and offered
further competencies for all pharmacists and pharmacy technicians for
continuing professional development. A specially designed CD-ROM was
also produced for technicians to meet their specific needs. For pharmacists
who are still not started with CPD, the Society now has a special “Getting
started” guide which helps individual pharmacists identify and
overcome the perceived barriers to CPD.
Mr Wildman is confident that pharmacists will be able to get to grips
with the challenges and the opportunities offered by CPD. He says: “I
have personally found that CPD helps you maintain your professional focus.
It makes you think about what you’re doing and helps you to learn
and develop your skills in a very systematic way. With CPD becoming mandatory
next year, I believe pharmacists should actively embrace it and what
better place to start than your local branch? Apart from increasing attendances
at wider branch meetings, facilitated CPD meetings have opened up all
kinds of debates and questions that would previously have had no formal
platform. I would encourage all members who do not fully understand the
implications of CPD, or who have some practical questions on the mechanics
of recording CPD to get along to their local branch meetings and talk
to people in the same boat. It will help them allay their worries about
CPD and they will see it is actually a very positive thing.”
Members with general questions about CPD can contact the CPD staff at
the Society by e-mail at cpd@rpsgb.org or by phone on 020 7572 2540.
Details of local branches can be found on the Society’s website |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal