Tomorrow's Pharmacist October 1999 p30-32
Edited by Pamela Mason

Postgraduate qualifications

Why consider a postgraduate qualification?

A variety of methods of continuing education are available to pharmacists. This article looks at one method - completing a postgraduate certificate, diploma or master's degree.

So, you have finished your degree. One more hurdle to go - the preregistration year, then that is it-finished! After all those years of studying, you will be a pharmacist. Nothing more to do but relax and catch up on that social life that you have had to put on hold. You can travel to all those interesting places - the ones that your old school friends, who started work ages ago, have been visiting for years and sending you "wish you were here" postcards from.
Wrong! Well there is nothing wrong with having a social life and visiting interesting places, but if you think you have finished studying - think again!
Becoming a pharmacist, while a worthy goal, will not be the end. It is only the beginning - the beginning of a career in a profession, the members of which owe a duty of care to society. Part of that duty requires us to be knowledgeable about the fields in which we practise and have up to date skills. You will be surprised how quickly biomedical and scientific knowledge is expanding. You must know what these developments, when translated in to medical treatments, mean for your customers and patients.

New skills

While you will find little use for some - or even perhaps a fair amount - of the knowledge that you gathered during your undergraduate years, there will be much that you have never covered or even considered. You will need to develop new skills and study new areas. For example, if you are going to be in a management role, then interview, motivation, development and appraisal skills will be useful. If you are going to be a clinical pharmacist, you will need to develop your clinical skills and knowledge. As a pharmaceutical adviser, you will need to understand how the NHS works and functions. If you are working in community pharmacy, are you able to help your local GP practice to analyse its prescribing data? Are you able to counter prescribe rationally and safely?

Lifelong learning

The Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society expects you to participate in at least 30 hours a year of continuing education, although there is, currently, no requirement for you to show that you have done this. The Council also expects that, of this 30 hours, you will meet with other pharmacists at least once for a continuing education purpose. The Society also specifies a national continuing education syllabus for pharmacy. The core syllabus specifies knowledge base and skills. It also provides further guidance for community, hospital, industrial, agricultural and veterinary, and academic pharmacy.
The government has placed a strong emphasis on the need for NHS health care professions to undertake continuing professional development and lifelong learning as part of the clinical governance agenda. While this agenda is likely to affect pharmacists working in hospitals in the first instance, it will be necessary for all pharmacists to demonstrate their commitment to continuing professional development (CPD) and lifelong learning. Health authorities, primary care groups and trusts, all of whom are responsible for delivering clinical governance, will ask chemist contractors and pharmacists for evidence of CPD and lifelong learning.
Many professional bodies are considering re-validation and re-accreditation schemes for their members. Eventually all bodies will take the same path. That, in terms of improving the quality of patient care, must lead to the assessment of "fitness to practice"— be that by peer review and demonstration of CPD, or a more formal approach.
Having established the need for lifelong learning, how are you going to achieve it and demonstrate that you doing so? Well, you can keep a portfolio of your professional development. This is a very useful tool - one that you can use to become a member of the College of Pharmacy Practice and one that I recommend you start early in your career. It is much easier to complete as you go along than it is to try to do it retrospectively - I know from experience!
If you are a community pharmacist, then there are the packages and courses provided by the Centre for Postgraduate Pharmacy Education (CPPE). Unfortunately, at the moment these are not available to hospital pharmacists.

Postgraduate courses

postgraduate study Study packages together with the portfolio allow you to develop at your own pace, but mostly in isolation. What of peer review and shared learning? These also are excellent methods and ones that you will have found useful during your undergraduate course. So why not share your learning and enrol on a postgraduate course? There are a variety of courses to choose from. You do not have to limit yourself to pharmacy courses. Many pharmacists have undertaken social science, psychology or business courses. What they all lead to is a postgraduate qualification ranging from a postgraduate certificate to a Pharm D. You might even want to develop your research skills and undertake a research degree, such as an MPhil or a PhD.
Where can you get information on the courses? Most schools of pharmacy offer postgraduate courses in clinical pharmacy, community pharmacy and/ or pharmaceutical care. In recent years these courses have become more flexible in their approach. They are usually modular in design and have a variety of exit points leading to the awards of certificate, diploma or MSc. In the first instance, why not search the universities' web sites to see what's on offer? Make a list of what you want from your study and see how the courses conform. Do you know anyone who has recently completed a postgraduate degree? What was their opinion of their course?
All universities are now inspected by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. As their name suggests, this agency is charged with assessing the quality of all higher education courses, including postgraduate ones. It grades the overall performance of the department delivering courses out of a maximum of 24.
Its reports are published on the agency's web site: http://www.qaa.ac.uk. These reports comment on the university department's individual courses as well as the overall grading. Although not all university departments and courses have been inspected yet, the process has started. The web site is well worth a visit and you could usefully compare the comments made on the various departments and their courses.
Undertaking a postgraduate course is not easy. It is time consuming. If you undertake a part-time degree, you have to balance the demands of the course, your social and family life and your job. It will be different from the full-time study that you experienced as an undergraduate. You will need to plan. Peer support groups formed with others on the course are extremely helpful.
You will also need to establish how you are going to fund the course. Will you or your employer pay? Does the academic institute offer flexibility in the payment of course fee - payment by instalments, for example? Remember that course fees are not as expensive as a good second hand car, and the award will last you a lifetime - which is more than can be said for the car!
Ultimately the rewards are vast. Besides the additional qualification, you will have demonstrated your commitment to continuing education and development, you will have developed some of your skills and established new ones. You will have made yourself more marketable and widened your opportunities. You will have rekindled your enthusiasm for knowledge and learning!

Mr Pettit is principal pharmacist, Brighton Health Care NHS Trust and senior lecturer in clinical pharmacy, University of Brighton.