The Pharmaceutical Journal / Nic Bunce
Health Education England (HEE) has published a review of current education and training provisions for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, together with recommendations for how those provisions should be reformed to meet the demands of the ‘NHS Long Term Plan’.
The review, titled ‘Advancing pharmacy education and training: a review’, was compiled by HEE’s pharmacy deans and published on 19 June 2019.
The recommendations say that proposals for the national foundation programme for pharmacists should be based on experiential learning and that the programme should prepare pharmacists to work across a range of settings including general practice, integrated urgent care and care homes.
It also recommends that HEE should work with NHS England and NHS Improvement to create a “sustainable funding model” for the programme, including “a reasonable balance of funding from education commissioners, employers and the individual”.
The review gives an overview of current and proposed education and training opportunities for advanced practitioners and consultant pharmacists.
The recommendations in the review will, it says, help HEE to “agree to the educational and financial case to reform pharmacy education and training … and identify what those recommended education and training reforms should be”.
Gail Fleming, director of education at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said the Society has a major role in “supporting the delivery of these recommendations — particularly in our work in standards and assessment for foundation, advanced practice and consultant pharmacists”.
