Independent prescribers may be ready for 2007 following Council's approval of training curriculum
Pharmacists could qualify as independent prescribers by the end of the year, following endorsement of a curriculum for the education and training of independent prescribers by the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
The curriculum was presented to the August
Council meeting on behalf
of the Society’s Education Committee by the Society’s head
of postgraduate learning and development, Peter Wilson.
The Education Committee identified the additional knowledge and skills
required for a supplementary prescriber to practise as an independent
prescriber and built these into the existing supplementary prescribing
curriculum. The additional learning elements include: taking an accurate
history; making a clinical assessment of a patient with the clinical
condition that the pharmacist intends to treat; making a general assessment
of a patient to rule out additional significant clinical problems; and
formulating a diagnosis.
An interim system, involving addition of a conversion course to existing
supplementary prescribing programmes ahead of a full independent prescribing
course being developed, has also been established. This will mean that
it should be possible for universities to begin conversion courses in
the coming academic year and therefore for supplementary prescribing
pharmacists to qualify as independent prescribers by the end of 2006,
Dr Wilson told the Council.
Hemant Patel, the Society’s President, commented: “It is
important that pharmacists have access to the right training and education
to enable them to prescribe safely as independent prescribers. The new
curriculum has been developed by the Society in its capacity as the regulator
of pharmacy education and training and we are looking forward to working
closely with the individual programme providers to accredit new courses
efficiently and effectively. We have built in flexibility to allow those
pharmacists who are already supplementary prescribers to take on the
additional professional responsibility of independent prescribing by
developing conversion courses as well as full independent prescribing
courses.”
Supplementary prescribing NHS Education for Scotland has
produced new online training materials for supplementary prescribers.
The package,
known as SUPPORT (supplementary prescribing for pharmacists online resources and training),
covers legal and policy aspects of supplementary prescribing, psychology
of prescribing,
evidence-based practice and principles of monitoring. It is designed for use
by pharmacists thinking about undertaking the prescribing course and those
who are already prescribing. |
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