Learning and CPD: 2025 in review

One of our main aims at The Pharmaceutical Journal is to provide pharmacists with high-quality, evidence-based educational resources that support their continuing professional development, ongoing competence and, ultimately contribute to improvements in patient care. The content we develop each year is insight-led and informed by close working relationships with a wide range of UK pharmacy affiliate and specialist groups. 

As we head towards 2026, we look back on some of the CPD and learning highlights published this year by The Pharmaceutical Journal.

At a glance, our list of most-read learning articles from 2025 shows the wide range and diverse nature of the pharmacy profession as well as how learning changes, but also continues from initial training and education through to advanced practice and specialised roles (see Box).

Supporting students and foundation trainees 

As a professional journal and member publication, The Pharmaceutical Journal is aimed to provide access to relevant resources for pharmacists at all stages of their career journey, starting with initial training and education and the foundation training year. Student membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is free and offers full access to The Pharmaceutical Journal, along with a range of other benefits.

In 2025, we responded to the registration assessment feedback published by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), as well as insights shared by users of the Pharmacy Knowledge ONtrack revision site, to develop even more content designed for students and foundation trainees, helping the next generation of pharmacists to optimise their approach to revision and prepare effectively for the GPhC registration assessment. We have also created a dedicated section of The Pharmaceutical Journal bringing together a range of content most relevant to this stage of learning.

As of December 2025, we are also approaching the half-way point of the current foundation training year — made all the more significant for the fact that this is the first cohort of trainees who be will assessed for prescribing competency.

Building the required supervision capacity has been a major undertaking for employers and education providers who have needed to create new models and approaches to supervision. In support of this, we worked with a team of expert authors from an NHS England commissioned pilot programme — ‘Embedding independent prescribing training into the foundation training year’ — to produce a series of articles for designated prescribing practitioners (DPPs) and supervisors. The series contains practical information, advice and insights aimed at members of the healthcare team stepping into DPP and supervisory roles for the first time.

This is an important complement to our fast-growing prescribing collection — a comprehensive learning resource that supports pharmacists in the development of the core skills and competencies required to independently prescribe medicines.

Developing digital skills 

Another theme from 2025 has been implementation of new technologies and digital skill development. We have produced articles on how to design and effectively implement e-prescribing systems into paediatrics and have published content on how pharmacists can begin to utilise AI and large language models into routine practice. Much more on this is planned for 2026.

Developing The Pharmaceutical Journal’s range of resources

We plan our commissioning around the primary competency frameworks, standards and curriculum ensuring that content is fully aligned with the evolving learning requirements of the profession, while meeting credentialing and revalidation purposes.

We use a range of different templates and article formats, each designed with specific learning methodologies in mind with our ‘prescribing dilemmas’ series being the most recent addition.

As a fully digital, online publication we are also able to produce interactive, visual content that can elevate learning and provide readers with information in more efficient and dynamic ways.

Supporting improvement and advocating for change

In 2025, we have also been able to build on our existing migraine content to explore the treatment pathway in greater depth and identify the main learning needs for pharmacists as well as the potential that exists for the pharmacy profession to lead improvements in patient care. Enabled by financial support provided by Pfizer, we were able to run an extensive survey of RPS members to generate unique data and insights on how migraine patients present to community pharmacy as well as confidence levels and knowledge of migraine treatments. The data were discussed at an expert round table meeting, which has helped shape a number of follow-up resources to be published in The Pharmaceutical Journal in the coming weeks and months.

Finally, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank our team of more than 200 authors and peer reviewers who share their knowledge, experience and time enabling us to continue to produce expert-led, high-quality, learning resources. It has been great to be able to work with each and every one of you and we hope to continue to do so in 2026.

For those of you who may be interested in writing learning content but are perhaps not sure how to get started, please do get in contact with a member of The Pharmaceutical Journal‘s research and learning team, and we would be happy to discuss your ideas and support you in taking that first step.