We support you with your career, your education and your CPD
In Faculty
Faculty hit the milestone of 500 submissions, and now, with some of these due for renewal, we’re focusing on aligning this with revalidation. Following significant development in Faculty recognition and training, we’re looking at supporting advanced clinical practitioners and consultants across health professions.
We gained our first cohort from Iceland - 11 pharmacists from the island joined the RPS Faculty, and in 2019 we’re hoping to see a second cohort.
In the past year, 1,759 members used our Faculty portfolio for professional development, adding well over 8,000 pieces of evidence.
Throughout 2019 we’re taking a close look at Faculty to ensure it matches the development needs and expectations of all our members – we’ve already spoken to almost 80 members about this.
In revalidation
Our members found our revalidation services a massive help in the first year of the new assessment.
Thanks to revalidation:
- Over 22,000 unique visitors looking for revalidation guidance viewed almost 120,000 pages
- We spoke to almost 12,000 pharmacists
- We ran almost a hundred events, as well as five webinars.
In Foundation
1,577 pharmacists and tutors accessed the RPS Foundation portfolio in 2018, completing over 3,800 workplace-based assessments.
In Education
We presented four posters at International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) 2018 Congress, and one received a commendation of excellence from the FIP Academic Section.
Five new members were added to the RPS Qualified Persons Eligibility List.
We published three articles in external publications about our professional development programmes.
We launched three National Training Programme and Transition Programmes with English and Welsh partners, supporting pharmacists to develop clinical skills in new areas of practice.
Our RPS Professional Development Curriculum was published, providing a support structure for development.
New Professional Knowledge Guides were published to help identify the knowledge, skills and behaviours that help members developing their practice.
The RPS Education team have worked with organisations across every area pharmacy, including:
- Employers
- NHS
- GPhC and Consultant Pharmacists Group
- Health Education and Improvement Wales
- Royal Colleges and other teaching groups
- Pharmacy Schools Council
- Commonwealth Pharmacists Association.
In day-to-day life
Our One-to-One Support Team has been there every weekday, providing 1:1 professional support for all our members, on every subject you can imagine (and some you probably can’t).
When not answering the phones, responding to emails or checking Twitter, the team have been creating guidance to support with upcoming changes to pharmacy such as FMD and rescheduling of gabapentin and pregabalin, as well as updating emergency supply, clinical governance, community pharmacy and controlled drugs pharmacy guide.
The team support pharmacists in all sectors, experiences and those wishing to pursue careers in new and emerging sectors, so they’ve been keeping up to date with the pharmacy landscape and potential new developments.
Our team are there to help make revalidation as stress-free as possible, for all our members who are submitting revalidation reflective accounts and peer discussions for the first time, and we’ve had some enthusiastic and touching feedback:
In the Library (and e-Library)
One of the great practical benefits of membership, the RPS e-Library includes e-books from Adverse Drug Interactions to Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
And if you’re looking for journal articles, our searchable databases of abstracts and full-text articles continues to grow.
At Events
Our Medicines Safety Conference in Wales attracted 200 people, with expert speakers from across the UK, inspiring delegates to deliver high quality and safe healthcare to their patients.
Our Pre-Registration Revision Courses and Mock Exams supported over 1,400 Pre-Registration Students from from January to August. And, thanks to member feedback, we made some real improvements in this service, such as the opportunity to take exam papers home.
We also delivered:
- Eight webinars to increase accessibility to expert knowledge for all members
- Face-to-face revalidation support for 645 members through local and national events
- 42 national events to 3,201 delegates
- 20 local engagement events in Wales, attracting 450 attendees
- 71 local engagement events in England, attracting 3,236 attendees
- 47 local engagement events in Scotland, with over 1,000 attendees.
In-house
To help promote mental wellness and support RPS colleagues who may be having a tough time, we trained employees from Wales, Scotland and England to become mental health first aiders.