Postgraduate training differences need to be resolved, says CCA
Principles for pharmacy education and training being developed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society should be used to resolve differences in the provision of post-graduate training arising from the division of Great Britain into England, Scotland and Wales, according to the Company Chemists Association.
Responding to a Society consultation (PDF 70K) on the draft principles
(PJ,
27 May, p639),
the CCA said: “Cross-border issues (for example, the
different remits of the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education and
the Welsh Centre for Postgraduate Pharmaceutical Education, and the
differences in funding and availability of training packages) already
cause difficulties for pharmacists and
their employees.”
The CCA also believes that there should be a review of pharmacy education
funding because there is no structure for student placements in community
pharmacy.
Student selection, it says, should take account of the fact that pharmacy
is a vocation, as well as a science-based profession. Soft skills, such
as communication, should be taken into account alongside commitment to
complete the course.
The CCA is also concerned at how
fitness-to-practise requirements might apply to pharmacy students.
It favours a process that would enable the Society to impress on students
that they are training for membership of a profession with a code of
ethics, while ensuring that “normal undergraduate behaviour is
not penalised”. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader