Hospital Pharmacist
Vol 11 No 8 p349-350
September 2004

CPD for technicians — what support can the CPPE provide?

Registration of pharmacy technicians is due to start next year, and completing continuing professional development (CPD) will be a requirement of this. This article outlines the approach that the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE) is taking to supporting CPD for technicians in England. It will provide information about:

· What CPPE is all about
· What this means for technicians
· Why technicians should be interested

We are preparing to support the personal development of pharmacy technicians. This article uses the CPD framework of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to help technicians get ready for their personal engagement with this approach (eg, reflect, plan, act and evaluate) to lifelong learning.

Reflection — taking time to consider your needs

Many technicians may have an image of us as an organisation that provides evening workshops for community pharmacists. However, we are also engaged in a variety of other activities and the workshops are open to any pharmacist who provides services to patients in the NHS.

We were set up in 1991 with a team of 64 local tutors, to provide equity of access to learning support for community pharmacists across England. Before 1991 there had been variable access to development materials: some areas were over-provided, others had little provision. This is a similar situation to that in which technicians now find themselves.

We now have a team of 97 local tutors and offer learning activities through workshops, paper-based open learning, web-based learning, computer assisted learning, audio and video tapes and CD-ROMs. All core materials are available, free of charge, to any community pharmacist or pharmacist who works in the NHS and is involved in patient care. A brochure detailing these materials is sent out three times a year.

In December 2001, the NHS Support team was established, with a key remit to support developments detailed in “Pharmacy in the future”.¹ We are now turning our attention to meeting the learning needs of pharmacy technicians.

Planning — deciding how to move things forward

Let us now consider how we plan to support pharmacy technician training.

Bespoke training materials We recognise that there is some commonality between the learning needs of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians — we all work together. However, we want to target technician training to meet the specific learning needs of pharmacy technicians. Therefore, we will develop training materials specifically for them rather than simply providing access to pharmacist training. We will work in partnership with training providers and technicians to design new courses and amend some of our current training materials. This will take time but the outcome will be learning resources that meet the needs of technicians.

Learning needs analysis To find out what is needed, we spoke with national trainers, employers and technicians themselves. Our trainer and employer contacts are listed in Panel 1. From these discussion events we found out:

· What is available at the moment
· What training is needed

We were also pleased by the level of enthusiasm and commitment to development which everyone we worked with shared. A number of themes emerged from the discussion — these will be prioritised (see Panel 2).

Quality assurance processes We follow stringent quality assurance processes in the development of learning activities, as required by university standard setters. As part of this process we make sure that we find out what learners need to be able to do at the end of the activity — and build this in from the start. To us, accreditation means meeting national standards and assuring that people are therefore fit for practice.

We also make sure that training is benchmarked. This means that we seek to raise standards of practice and professional activity. We need to find out:

· What is current practice
· What is desired practice

We design our materials to move practice forwards — giving those that complete the training a more fulfilling professional role.

Teamwork brings the best result — there can be little doubt about this. As we develop our learning activities, we will seek to consider the skill mix agenda and how pharmacists and technicians can work together to improve patient care. A key part of this will be for sessions to encourage technicians to attend and learn together.

Action — trying it out for size

The first thing that we did was to develop an interactive web portal, aimed at supporting pharmacy technicians. It is going to take time to develop materials, so the best first step was to help technicians find out what is already available. The web portal can be viewed here. Information can also be accessed at www.cppe.man.ac.uk by selecting the pharmacy technician link within the NHS Plan.

The website is not comprehensive yet — if you are a training provider that is not listed or you are a technician with ideas for the website, then get in touch. We are now working on the first CPPE learning resource — Standard Operating Procedures.

We have also been pleased at the level of interest in the CPPE open learning materials, written for pharmacists. We want to make sure that any learning meets the needs of technicians, while supporting their teamwork with the pharmacist. So we are now developing support guides for our open learning packs. These will be written specifically to draw out key points for pharmacy technicians (and add them in where needed). We are still finding out what the most important titles are for technicians. If you have not told us yet, then get in touch — contact information is available from the box at the bottom of p349.

Evaluation — did it work as planned?

This is the progress so far. We will continue to listen to the needs of technicians in taking developments forwards. We are committed to providing the learning activities that technicians need. To do this, we need technicians to engage with us and to let us know what they need. This can be achieved in a number of ways:

· Talk to your colleagues, get them to read this article and then discuss together how we can help

· Get in touch with us and let us know what your learning needs are as professional pharmacy technicians

· Let us know if we get something wrong, and when we get things right

Summary

We have used the CPD framework for this article to demonstrate our reflections and plans to date. Now we are acting on those plans and we will be evaluating the success of our approach. Why not try out the process for yourself and consider what your developmental needs are now? Panel 3 sets out a CPD framework for this article.

References

1. Department of Health. Pharmacy in the future: implementing the NHS plan. London: The Department;2000.