Our role in accreditation
Our Role: Support and Recognition of Professional Education
As the professional leadership body for pharmacy, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has a defined role in professional education as laid out in the Objects of our Royal Charter. These include a role to support and develop high standards of education and training. The RPS believes that high quality initial and ongoing education, training and development should be available to all pharmacists across sectors at all stages of their careers in order to develop a workforce that is not only capable but confident as leaders in healthcare.
Our Function as a Royal College
Alongside this, the RPS believes our function as a Royal College is to lead and set standards for the skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of pharmacists whatever their stage in practice. Provision of a professional accreditation programme is part of this function and is consistent with similar accreditation programmes provided by other Royal Colleges. The programme has been developed in response to demand from providers external to pharmacy, as well as from within.
Our Accreditation Provision
Our accreditation programme involves awarding a quality mark, our logo, to training and education materials, resources and events that meet defined standards thus enabling our profession to identify high quality materials and events to support their professional development and ultimately patient care.
RPS accreditation is based on rigorous processes including independent expert reviewers for all accreditation applications, many reviewers are RPS Faculty members. Governance and oversight of the accreditation programme is provided by an independent Professional Accreditation Panel.
Only providers who meet the RPS principles will be awarded RPS accreditation. For training providers that do not meet our standards, we provide helpful and constructive feedback to enable them to further develop and improve their materials.
The vision for the accreditation programme is to develop a library of accredited training and education resources and events to support the development of our profession. This provides a mechanism to signpost to education, learning and development opportunities related to medicines, pharmacy or professional development, as well as a suite of learning and development mapped to RPS Foundation and Faculty stages of practice.
Accreditation with the RPS recognises providers of high quality education and training resources that lead in education development and delivery, and in turn demonstrates our commitment to supporting the future development of the profession and the wider healthcare team, in line with our vision, the vision for health care delivery, science and business.