Protected Development Time for Community Pharmacy Professionals

Community pharmacies are an extremely busy environment with high demands and often no access to protected time for development.

Previous research is widely demonstrative of the challenges that pharmacists in community settings face in pursuing core personal development (CPD) and training. In response, Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) have developed a new pilot that offers three models of protected time to support the self-development of community pharmacists across a 12-month period, all of which offer slightly different opportunities for development:

Model 1: Protected Time Only - up to 12 days to pursue CPD for development against a recognised framework that is organised by themselves.

Model 2: Protected Time with Mentor Input - up to 12 days protected time that includes 6 days of ‘in-practice’ support from a mentor or an educational supervisor.

Model 3: Protected Time for Attending Training - up to 15 days that can be used to undertake credit-bearing qualifications.

CUREMeDE has been commissioned to evaluate the pilot in order to assess how well the different models support pharmacy professionals to acquire additional knowledge and skills for service provision or evidence their progression within a recognised framework. The evaluation will provide detailed evidence of the outcomes of the three models which will be used to inform future policy direction and the NHS Education Commissioning and Training Plan.

The intention is that findings from the evaluation will help to inform options for supporting the transition to the in new GPhC Initial Education and Training Standards (IETS) for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

Our final report is expected Summer 2022.