New reflection and learning resource for revalidation

21 March 2019

The General Pharmaceutical Council, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Association of Pharmacy Technicians in the UK have joined together to publish a reflection and learning resource to support everyone across the pharmacy to learn the lessons from the Gosport Independent Panel report.

The Gosport report, published in June 2018, found that at least 450 patients died having been inappropriately prescribed opioids between 1998 and 2000.

We are encouraging pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to consider using the new reflection and learning resource for their revalidation records including their reflective accounts.

The lessons learnt from Gosport are very relevant to the three standards that all pharmacy professionals must reflect on in their first year of completing a reflective account for revalidation; standard 3 (communicating effectively), standard 6 (behaving professionally) and standard 9 (demonstrating leadership).

The reflection and learning resource:

  • brings together the key pharmacy themes from the Gosport Independent Panel report
  • looks at current pharmacy practice and how things have changed
  • recaps on the expectations on pharmacy professionals (pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) and systems
  • highlights key resources and other materials

The resource emphasises that pharmacy practice has improved significantly since these incidents took place, including through strengthened professional requirements, the introduction of the duty of candour, improved oversight of controlled drugs, and closer working across the multi-disciplinary team. It is important to reflect and learn from what happened to make sure that these failures in care are never repeated.

We are also urging urge everyone across pharmacy to consider the presentation and discuss what this means for their practice with other professionals, students and support staff.

Take a look at the learning resource

Completing your reflective account

In your second year of revalidation, you will have to submit a reflective account record, alongside a peer discussion record and four CPD records.

The purpose of the reflective account is to encourage you to think about how you meet our standards for pharmacy professionals in the work you do as a pharmacy professional.

Evidence suggests that producing a reflective account that focuses on our standards increases awareness and understanding of the standards and helps you reflect on how your practice affects the people using your services.

Your reflective account should include:

  1. A brief summary of your practice history for the last year including who the typical users of your service may be

Tell us briefly about your work (the setting of your practice, your main roles and responsibilities, the typical users of your service). Giving us this type of context is helpful if your record is selected for review, and also helps you to consider if the people using your services have changed.

  1. A statement of how you have met one or more of the standards for pharmacy professionals

In the first year of doing the reflective account the standards to use are:

  • standard 3 - pharmacy professionals must communicate effectively
  • standard 6 - pharmacy professionals must behave professionally
  • standard 9 - pharmacy professionals must demonstrate leadership

You can look at our example records to see how to identify standards you have met.

  1. Examples to support your statement

Give at least one (but ideally more) examples to support your account so that we can see how you have reflected on the standards and their application in practice. The standards for pharmacy professionals are all inter-related, so you will find that you can show how you met more than one of them using just one example.

Our Head of Revalidation, Osama Ammar, will be leading a session about how to complete your reflective account and peer discussion at the Clinical Pharmacy Congress on 7-8 June 2019 at ExCeL London. We hope you can join Os at the session.

Find more supporting materials to help you complete your reflective account