1. Anna Rueben, Paul Forsyth, Alison Thomson Anna.Rueben@ggc.scot.nhs.uk
The Professional Development Needs of Scottish Hospital Pharmacists Post Foundation Training
Anna Rueben, Paul Forsyth, Alison Thomson
Aim
To measure self-reported competence of Advanced Stage 1 practice in hospital pharmacists who have completed Foundation Training in the last 5 years and to gather feedback on post Foundation Training.
Methods
A mixed methods online survey was distributed to six acute hospital sites in NHS GGC
Targeted pharmacists who had completed Foundation Training between Jan 2013-Jan 2018
Participants self-reported competency against the APF’s Advanced Stage 1 competencies
Qualitative data was collected through free text questions.
Results
Overall Self-reporting of Competence
20 out of 28 eligible pharmacists responded to the survey (71.4%)
19 out of 20 participants were under 30 years old (95%)
7 participants were independent prescribers and 5 participants held the MSc qualification
Before completing the survey, 14/20 had never read the APF (70%)
Expert Professional Practice and Collaborative Working Relationships had the highest levels of self-reporting of competency (Figure 1)
Management had the lowest average number of competencies evidenced (48%).
Research & Evaluation (57%) and Leadership (67%) also had lower overall averages.
Self-reported competence for individual competencies are shown in Figure 2.
Background
Pharmacists are being encouraged to take on new roles and advance their current practice following their initial Foundation Training.1
Competency frameworks are increasingly being used worldwide to support this.2 In the UK, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Advanced Practice Framework (APF)3 sets out 3 stages of advanced practice (Figure 1).
Figure 1 RPS roadmap to advance practice 4
The APF has 34 competencies which are divided into 6 clusters. These competencies describe the skills a pharmacist should have to be considered at working at that particular level of advanced practice.
Qualitative Analysis Themes
Support required to enable completion of further competencies:
Work place vision
Lack of opportunities
More senior support
‘Need to understand what the workplace vision is!’
Participant A
Suggested formats for post foundation training:
Mentorship Programme
Postgraduate qualifications
‘A one to one peer mentoring scheme.
A trainee would be assigned to a more senior pharmacist and draw up a professional development plan and set tasks/goals to be met over a set period of time.’
Participant C
Conclusion
Following Foundation Training hospital pharmacists report competence in Expert Professional Practice, Collaborative Working Relationships and Education & Training
More opportunities and senior support are required to allow further development for leadership, management and research skills.
There needs to be a clearer workplace vision to facilitate professional development
Future professional development programmes should adopt a holistic approach to address all areas of development to advanced practice
Figure 2. Proportion of competencies self-reported as evidenced for each APF cluster with sub-groups for number of years qualified and if participant held MSc qualification (%).
Figure 3. Proportion of competencies self-reported as evidenced for each APF competency (%).
References
The Scottish Government APS Group. Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care – A Strategy for Scotland, ISBN:
International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP). Research, development and evaluation strategies for pharmaceutical education and the workforce: A global report. Hague:FIP;
Kopelman P, Duggan C. The RPS Advanced Pharmacy Framework. Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, 2013.
Kopelman P et al. The RPS Roadmap to advanced practice. Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, 2016.