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It appears that Continuing Education (CE) is on the way out in the UK. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is now in vogue and moves are afoot to make this mandatory for UK pharmacists, who wish to remain on the register. CE is only a part of the new CPD process.
The whole process as described in the Pharmaceutical Journal (UK) published last week, seems to be a quality initiative, based around pharmacists deciding what areas they need to improve, and undertaking the necessary training and CE to meet these goals, and then evaluating the process.
The CE programs in the UK are now being rejigged to fit the CPD process, and the various post-graduate Pharmacy education institutions are designing their own CPD programs for pharmacists.
Large pharmacy chains will be forced to take a vested interest in providing CPD opportunities to their pharmacists, particularly in the competitive labour market that exists in the UK at the moment.
So how does this compare to the Australian situation?
In Queensland the new Pharmacists' Registration Act (2000) gives the Board wide-scoping powers to implement such a scheme without needing further legislation before the parliament.
And similar noises are coming from the other states.
So far only CE is really in place in Australia, and this was a requirement during my pre-registration year, and was not too onerous a task.
I certainly feel it has helped to fill some gaps in my knowledge, and in many instances replace knowledge I learnt only 12 months earlier.
The quality cycle of CPD is something which will not be foreign to many pharmacists who will have been through the Quality Care program, although it will be geared at pharmacists rather than pharmacies.
If we see the ideas from the UK filtering through to Australia it would not be unreasonable to suggest that CPD will vary greatly depending on the professional setting of the pharmacist.
Currently most CE is fairly general in nature, with the exception of some hospital specific, and management specific training. CPD programs will need the flexibility to be tailored to individual pharmacists if they are going to be made mandatory. In a profession with a huge personnel shortage, the last thing we need is requirements which are so demanding they remove the initiative for older pharmacists to stay in the profession, and which drive pharmacists away at the other end.
In the UK, it is thought that pharmacists who are changing their area of practice will be the first targets of CPD.
This group seems an obvious target, and in Australia at the moment there is a barrier between community and hospital pharmacy, that makes it difficult for entrenched retail pharmacists to move into the clinical setting (and vice-versa). The medication review accreditation process will help with the necessary skills for pharmacists looking for clinical work, but there is a knowledge gulf (which goes both ways) between the two settings, and CPD may be one way of assisting pharmacists looking to move between fields.
On a micro-level CPD could be targetted at clinical pharmacists changing specialities, or retail pharmacists who are taking on more management responsibilities, or the DMMR programme.
Not all in the UK believe mandatory CPD is the way to go, and the deputy director of the Welsh equivalent of our ACPP is quoted in the above article as saying "If you can demonstrate that the profession is doing what it should do, you divert away the gaze of the Government.", implying that it is little more than a smokescreen to appease the regulatory bodies.
Another argument oft-used against compulsary CE or CPD is that it forces uninterested parties to take part, and thus many activities are of little value, and resources are wasted.
Thus there exists a challenge for those proposing compulsary CPD.
It has to be made relevant and interesting, so that pharmacists feel a need to participate.
There is an obvious benefit that can be gained for the profession as a whole from ensuring all pharmacists are engaged in personal quality improvement (as ghastly as the terminology may be!).
The Pharmaceutical Journal (UK) article: http://www.pharmj.com/Editorial/20011027/features/cpd.html

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