It’s hard to deny that community pharmacy offers a wealth of opportunities. You can run your own business or become the rising star in a corporation; you can become a pharmacist with a special interest or turn your hand to locum cover. The sector is your oyster.
The problem is that the community pharmacy career ladder lacks definition: what’s the next step after you’ve passed your pre-registration exam? What is the next move to make in your blossoming career?
While postgraduate courses already exist for community pharmacists, they are not viewed as a necessary or even natural step. As Medway School of Pharmacy’s Dr Shivaun Gammie says: “There’s often no structure and no support given to community pharmacists.”
The problem has also been recognised by government advisers. In February, Sir Christopher Edwards, chairman of NHS Medical Education England – the independent body which advises ministers on healthcare education – told C+D that careers in pharmacy needed “clarity of vision”.
Compare and contrast the career development pathway of a community pharmacist with a hospital pharmacist. The NHS has clearly defined bands of pay, with a series of skills and competencies expected to be attained by staff at certain levels. The means of acquiring these skills is also clearer – underpinning a career in hospital pharmacy is the completion of a diploma. Indeed, postgraduate qualifications are something of a natural expectation in the sector, allowing pharmacists to climb the ladder to the top of the profession one rung at a time.
While this structure is not in place for community pharmacists, they can no longer afford to rest on the laurels of their undergraduate course if they want to maximise their career potential and take on challenging new roles. In 2008, the pharmacy white paper set the agenda, putting clear emphasis on increasing clinical service delivery. And the CPD requirements for pharmacists also mean that life-long learning and development have become a necessity.
Step forward the Joint Programmes Board (JPB). This collaboration between nine university schools of pharmacy from across south east England and the NHS has an established programme for general level hospital pharmacists and is now launching a similar programme for community pharmacists.
It’s an approach supported at the highest echelons of the profession. Community pharmacy tsar Jonathan Mason is an advocate of on-the-job career progression. “It’s the way forward to support the development of community pharmacists,” he says. “The approach, taking on modular diplomas, is the best way to allow pharmacists to study at their own pace and in their own organisations.”
From September, Medway School of Pharmacy (one of the JPB partners) and C+D will be offering a new programme to give some definition to the blurred state of community careers. Based around a competency framework endorsed by the RPSGB (the ‘general level framework’), the work-based course is aimed at newly qualified pharmacists or those expanding their range of competencies.
“It’s about giving you a solid grounding in general level practice and preparing you to take on further roles,” says Dr Gammie.
The aim of the course is simple: to make sure pharmacists are at a standard level of competency, and provide an academic qualification to prove it. As the course uses the General Level Framework, it gives pharmacists powerful evidence to show PCTs that they have the skills needed to take on local enhanced services.
But the real difference, says Dr Gammie, is that the programme gives students the flexibility to identify their learning needs – while the course has a set end point, how you get there is up to you.
“You assess yourself individually. What you do for this programme is work with your practice tutor to develop an individualised learning plan for you, based on meeting all the General Level Framework competencies.”
The course is divided into a certificate and a diploma, each designed to be studied over 18 months. The majority of the course takes place in the workplace, although students are supported through study days and online tutorials. The certificate covers the essentials of practice, including clinical and services development as well as staff management; the diploma provides a gateway to the challenges that await at the top of the profession.
“The certificate is about getting everyone to a general level,” says Dr Gammie. “With the diploma, you cover three defined areas of practice, and these are specialist areas: not yet at the advanced level, but starting to develop specialisation.”
The diploma modules include skills absent from the undergraduate course: students will learn how to develop a business case and unravel the mysteries of commissioning. The final stage of the course also prepares pharmacists to progress further, whether it’s to be a pharmacist with a special interest (PhwSI) or an independent prescriber.
The future of pharmacy is changing. Medical Education England has promised a postgraduate career structure that will allow the next generation of students to embrace their new roles and push ahead. But for the current crop of community pharmacists who want to move on, the Medway course, and others like it, may deliver the career pathway they need now.
For more about the Medway School of Pharmacy Diploma in General Pharmacy Practice, contact Shivaun Gammie at s.gammie@gre.ac.uk