CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT (CPD) PROGRAMS

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs encompass structured learning activities

designed to help professionals maintain and enhance their knowledge, skills, and abilities
throughout their careers. These programs are a commitment to ongoing learning, often required
by professional bodies to ensure competence and relevance in a changing field. Continuing
Professional Development is a powerful learning tool that professionals from across all industries
can apply to their lives to remain focused on improving skills, ensuring academic qualifications
do not become outdated, and take an empowering approach to career progression.

With over 27 years' experience providing CPD accreditation to organisations across all
industries, The CPD Certification Service is a key driving force in the promotion of Continuing
Professional Development across the world, with CPD members in over 100 countries and
growing.

DEFINITION:

Continuing education in pharmacy profession is a structured process of education designed or

intended to support continuous development for pharmacist to maintain and enhance professional
competence.

PRINCIPLES OF CPD:

 CPD is a systematic process ongoing continuous process of self-directed learning.

 CPD include everything that practitioners learn that enables them to be more effective as
professional.
 CPD includes the entire scope of practitioners practice and may include activities both
within and inside usual work settings.
 CPD can strengthen the relationship between practitioner and his organization.
 Practitioners are responsible for their own professional development.
 The organization has a role in helping practitioner and meet needs in related to his
profession and job.

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CPD accreditation provides the independent and professional third-party evaluation of training
courses, events and other forms of structured learning to ensure they conform to the increasingly
recognized Continuing Professional Development industry standards.

CDP CYCLE:

The CPD Cycle is a practical tool that helps individuals to structure their Continuing•
Professional Development learning easily throughout the year, and to identify regular and
measurable improvements in work-related skills and knowledge.

It includes:

 Reflection on practice.
 Critical incident analysis.
 Appraisal and peer review.
 Professional Audit.
 Reading and continuing education events.
 Reflecting on Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain areas of competence.
 Planning.
 Action.
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 Evaluation.
 Plan and Record.
A. REFLECTION ON PRACTICE: Reflection on practice is the process that is used to
'self-diagnose' our learning needs. This process involves standing back and looking at
what has been achieved in our practice and where we see our career progressing in the
future.
B. CRITICAL INCIDENT ANALYSIS: Critical incident analysis is about learning from
meaningful events and involves taking a thoughtful approach to a particular event and
looking at the outcome.
 It is not important if the outcome to the event was positive or negative. The important
issue is that the event is analyzed, and the question asked: 'What did I do to bring about
this positive/negative outcome?'.
 If the outcome was positive, then we are looking at ways of applying our success to other
similar situations. If the outcome was negative, then we are looking at ways of avoiding a
similar situation in the future.
C. APPRAISAL AND PEER REVIEW: Appraisal and peer review are an excellent way
of assessing learning needs. Typically, the way we view our own work is often different
from the way that our line manager or colleagues see us. For example, we may be over-
critical of what we do or may have blind spots and areas of development that we tend to
ignore.
D. PROFESSIONAL AUDIT: A professional audit involves systematic evaluation of
professional work against set standards.
Professional audit is a useful tool when reflecting on our learning needs. Critical
reflection on the information provided by an audit can act as a stimulus to help identify
individual learning needs.
E. READING AND CONTINUING EDUCATIN EVENTS: Active reading of journal
articles and the participation in CE activities such as workshops can often encourage the
wider exploration of an area of personal development.
 The consideration of questions such as those found in the 'Checkpoint' sections at the
start of the chapters in this book can be a useful tool.

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  The questions can act as a prompt to ask: 'is this subject relevant to my practice and
how can I apply this knowledge ?
F. REFLECTING ON RPSGB AREAS OF COMPETENCE: Another approach is to
regularly take stock of our competence by matching our own self-assessed competence
against published criteria.

Having looked at different opportunities to reflect on practice we now need to set specific
learning objectives.

The SMART acronym is a useful tool when setting objectives.

 S - Specific: the objective should state clearly what it is that you want to be able to do.
 M - Measurable: will it be possible to determine if you have met your learning objective?
 A - Achievable: will it be possible to achieve your objective when you take into account
resources such as time, cost and support?
 R - Relevant: is the learning objective relevant to your practice? The more specific your
objective, the more useful it is likely to be. Avoid using woolly or broad statements.
 T - Timed: your specific objective needs a specific deadline for your goal to become real.
G. PLANNING: The first part of the planning stage is to decide on the urgency of the
identified objectives.
 There may be an urgent and immediate need to meet an identified objective or the
objective may relate to an ongoing development need that will only become apparent
over a period of months or years.
 The second stage of the planning process is to consider the importance of the learning
objective in terms of how the learning will impact on yourself, your colleagues, your
organization and your service users.
H. ACTION: This part of the CPD process is about implementing plans that have been
selected during the planning stage.
 The specific plans are carried out within the defined time limit and a summary is made of
what has been achieved.
 Once the planned activity has taken place, it is time to move on to the evaluation stage.
I. EVALUATION: At this stage of the CPD cycle, questions are being asked such as:
 Has my learning objective been met?

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  Have I tested if what I have learnt can be applied to practice?
 Am I now able to work differently?
 Were there any problems with the reflection, planning or action parts of the CPD cycle?

J. UNSCHEDULED LEARNING: Not all CPD falls into the neat cycle of reflection, planning,
action and evaluation. In some cases, the pharmacist may have a conversation with a colleague
or attend a training event and learn something that could be applied specifically to their practice.

 The learning is unscheduled or opportunistic as it was not a planned piece of CPD.

 This type of learning starts with action and moves on to the evaluation of what was
learnt.
 In some cases, this may be developed further by reflecting in more depth and moving on
to the reflection stage of a new CPD cycle.

K. PLAN AND RECORD: The pharmacist CPD record should comply with the good practice
criteria published by the RPSGB.

 Good practice criteria and useful advice to support the pharmacist in recording their CPD
are available on the RPSGB Plan and Record. Referring to these criteria can help to
ensure that the CPD portfolio is balanced.
 It is important that a CPD record includes examples of learning that starts ataction andd
learning that starts at reflection.
 The aim of CPD recording is to produce a portfolio of good-quality entries. The portfolio
should reflect good practice criteria, using different learning activities, rather than a large
collection of similar entries.

UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS:

1. Write a note on continuing professional development programs for pharmacists. (2024)

(5).
2. What are the education and training activities provided for the hospital pharmacist.
(2023) (5)
3. Discuss the various education and training activities of hospital pharmacists and their role
with other departments. (2021) (10).
4. Continuing professional development program (2021) (5).

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