PJ Online | MM: What you need to do to become a full member of the faculty

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Medicines Management
Issue no 6, p15
November/December 2002

Features

What you need to do to become a full member of the faculty

After consultation, the Faculty of Prescribing and Medicines Management has developed a framework needed to accredit activities on behalf of its membership. Those involved drew on the views of the membership, and other accreditation bodies such as the Royal College of Nursing and the College of Pharmacy Practice

What will the FPMM accredit?

On behalf of the membership, a panel of faculty members will accredit study days and courses it provides — both inside and outside the faculty — and accredit both previous learning and experiential learning.

Accredited events will carry a quality "kitemark", reflective documen-tation for members to complete and use in their portfolio as they build credits toward full faculty membership, plus personalised certificates also for use in their portfolio.

In response to the wishes of the membership, competent presenters will deliver evidence-based materials related to the previously identified competencies and support them with quality documentation. (Full details of the competency framework can be found on the CPP website under Faculty of Prescribing and Medicines Management at www.Collpharm.org.uk

How to become a full FPMM member

If you work in the field of prescribing and medicines management, you are likely to have qualifications and experience in this area. As everybody has a range of differing skills, it is necessary for the faculty to be able to accredit both the paper qualifications you may have gained (external qualifications) and the previous experiential ("on the job") learning. On joining the faculty, new members will be given "associate membership".

In order to progress to full membership, an associate member will have to have 100 credits. Up to 60 of those credits can be obtained by previous experiential learning and the rest of the credits will be obtained by portfolio. A full list of pertinent qualifications for previous learning can be found on the FPMM website but includes degrees, diplomas and other qualifications relevant to medicines management. Authors, lecturers and existing CPP members are not forgotten and credits are given to these groups as well.

Your FPMM portfolio should contain the evidence required to support full membership. In this, the applicant will list all his/her relevant experience, with examples under each identified competency. This could include documents, policies and other material produced by the applicant.

The evidence required to become a full faculty member is thus a balance of the number of credits already obtained by external qualification and the evidence of "on the job" learning in the portfolio. This was seen as a pragmatic way forward by the membership and achieves a balance between past experience and CPD.

Submission of material

When both sections of the application are complete, applicants should submit the portfolio and evidence of credits, with a short essay explaining why they want to join the faculty and any more useful supporting information. The portfolio submission will be considered and will be followed by an interview with two peers from the faculty. The applicant will be given full membership (based on the fact that the interview would not take place unless the peer group felt that sufficient evidence had been presented).

Members will be encouraged to keep their portfolios up-to-date, so if you haven't started assembling your portfolio, now is the time to start!

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