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Joy Wingfield, Keith Wilson and Sandra
Hall are members
of the APPLET management team
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Proposals from APPLET
1. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society should
re-establish the interface between those whose functions in the
Society make and interpret
the “rules” governing pharmacy and those who teach
these topics within the MPharm.
2. The future competencies to be achieved within the MPharm should
reflect the consensus curriculum on pharmacy law and ethics developed
by the APPLET project after consultation with lecturers in pharmacy
law and ethics, practitioners and stakeholders.
3. The Society should offer financial support for the continuation
and expansion of the APPLET resources to review and develop the
national curriculum in response to change, to assist lecturers
in delivering the future competencies of the MPharm and to develop,
pilot and evaluate new methods of curriculum delivery.
4. The Society should develop a strategy to secure the quality
of teaching in professionalism, law and ethics in the MPharm course.
In particular, this should include (a) review of accreditation
criteria to make explicit the requirement for a senior staff pharmacist
to have responsibility for the professional part of the curriculum,
and (b) interpretation of “appropriately qualified” in
the context of pharmacy law and ethics to mean at least one permanent
member of staff at senior lecturer or above who is both a pharmacist
and has postgraduate qualification in health care law or health
care ethics |
November saw closure of yet another Royal Pharmaceutical Society consultation, this time on principles that should underpin pharmacy education and training. Within the consultation document were a series of desirable objectives but no detail as to how these were to be achieved. Individual pharmacists have already recognised that the changing health care environment and new responsibilities call for constructive action from the Society. Their
responses to the Society’s consultation on the new Code of Ethics,
included a plea for the Society to address “educational and training
needs that the change in the Code will bring” and the view that “the
Society will need to strengthen the education and support available to
pharmacy students and members of the Society in preparing them to exercise
judgement”.
As the team managing the APPLET (Advancing the Provision of Pharmacy Law
and Ethics Teaching) project to advance the undergraduate teaching of pharmacy
law and ethics we can only agree — and we lament the fact that next
year APPLET will fold without some tangible support from the Society for
its objectives. The APPLET project team has responded to the consultation
on education with proposals (see Panel) relating to student education on:
· Professional behaviours, values and attitudes and fitness to practise
· Principles of health care law and ethics and their application to pharmacy
practice
· Sources and systems of UK law relevant to pharmacy
We believe that, since this group of competencies is core to the practice
of pharmacy, there is a need for those who make the rules to take a direct
involvement in setting educational standards and supporting continued
development and delivery of this component of the curriculum.
Concerned
The progress
of APPLET has been reported earlier (PJ, 29 October 2005,
p549) and we have involved members of the Society’s staff and
Council in our activities and progress. We are now concerned that much
of this effort may be lost if we fail to lobby for some initiatives
to consolidate this progress.
We have made four proposals to the Society in our response to its consultation
on education. Our first proposal simply asks for a return to past practice
when, until 2003, the Society hosted biennial meetings with those who
taught law and ethics in schools of pharmacy. Given the scale and pace
of change in regulatory and ethical challenges created by expanding pharmacy
roles, the need for a re-engagement between rule-makers and rule-teachers
is heightened, not diminished. There is a need to establish such liaison
on a regular and frequent basis to facilitate dialogue, perhaps share
case studies, to help lecturers keep abreast of the Society’s expectations
for competencies in aspects of health care law, regulation and ethics.
Secondly, we seek incorporation of the consensus core curriculum for
pharmacy law and ethics (better expressed as professionalism, health
care law and ethics) into the Society’s planning for syllabus review
and the development of a competency-based specification for the MPharm
degree. The development of such a curriculum has been of considerable
benefit to those new to professional practice teaching or wishing to
develop new topics. Staff teaching “pharmacy law and ethics” are
frequently part-time teacher practitioners who need help to enhance their
own understanding of, and to teach students about, UK legal systems,
principles of health care law and ethics, and professional qualities. Society’s responsibilities
Thirdly, we believe that the scope of
APPLET falls squarely within the area of professionalism and the Society’s
regulatory and ethical responsibilities. We suggest that there is a case
for active participation of the Society as a regulator to ensure continued
development of this unique professional area of the curriculum and of
methods to support learning. At least partial funding support from the
Society would enable APPLET to maintain its momentum as a national educational
resource. Simple maintenance of a website requires funding, together
with academic input to maintain its quality and currency. Further development
could include teaching material for new topics, new teaching and assessment
methods, courses and workshops for lecturers and seminars using expert
speakers from related fields.
Our final proposal may be a “work towards” policy and we
hope that one day it will happen. Our experience is that lecturers in
professional areas of practice are aware of gaps in their technical knowledge
and expertise in fundamental areas of health care law and ethics that
should be understood by all health care professionals. They do not need
this expertise necessarily to teach students all the detail but to give
themselves “head room” to inform their teaching. As roles
of pharmacists take them into ever more challenging clinical practice,
this need will grow rather than diminish. In 1998 the General Medical
Council endorsed suggestions from an expert group that schools of medicine
should recruit specialist lecturers in the field of health care law and
ethics to develop and enhance teaching quality. We believe the time is
now appropriate for the Society to explore a similar recommendation for
the MPharm course.
Competencies in professionalism, and in the wider fields of health care
law and ethics, are new pastures for pharmacy. Stimulated by scandals
in other health professions, a rising propensity to complain and litigate
in our citizens and a long-awaited transition from supplier of medicines
to clinical professional, we know that schools of pharmacy can rise to
the challenge of preparing new pharmacists for these perils. But to make
real progress we need collaboration from the Society. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal