Professional skills
It takes more than clinical knowledge and technical skills to reach your full potential in pharmacy practice. Professional skills — such as teamwork, leadership, communication and decision making — are equally important for delivering high-quality patient care.
Our collection of professional skills and career development resources is informed by the RPS’s Post-registration Foundation Curriculum and the Core Advanced Pharmacist Curriculum, organised into nine categories.
New content is added regularly so if you have suggestions for further topics that you would like to see included, please contact the research and learning team.
Career and professional development
Top five articles from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s research journals
Creating effective assessment activities for foundation trainees
Selecting an appropriate model of supervision for foundation trainees
How to optimise the 90 hours of dedicated prescribing practice during the foundation training year
How to be an effective designated prescribing practitioner
How to be an effective mentor
Communication and consultation skills
Structured medication reviews in frailty
Making medication counselling count: practical tips for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians
Seven ways pharmacy can improve outcomes for those impacted by substance use
Tips for effective lipid management consultations for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease
How to use emotional intelligence typologies to improve communication and interpersonal skills
Emergency contraception: best practice for pharmacy
Role of pharmacists in supporting children and young people who self-harm
Equality, diversity and inclusion
Best practice for consultations with patients with additional speech and hearing needs
Ten ways to implement inclusive recruitment in pharmacy
The ethnicity awarding gap: ‘not a problem that is easily solved’
Tips for building an inclusive pharmacy workforce
Increasing diversity in pharmacy senior leadership: the ENIGMA mentoring scheme
How to make the pharmacy workplace inclusive for neurodivergent team members
Best practice principles for inclusive care of transgender and non-binary patients
Leadership, management and teamwork
Improving resilience in pharmacy practice: reducing the burden of multitasking
The unexpected importance of workplace resilience in pharmacy practice
Conflict management for pharmacy managers: part two
Conflict management for pharmacy managers: part one
How to be an effective designated prescribing practitioner
How to be an effective mentor
Disagreement and conflict in teams
Practice-based skills
Principles of effective prescription writing for pharmacist prescribers
Making medication counselling count: practical tips for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians
Seven ways pharmacy can improve outcomes for those impacted by substance use
Emergency contraception: best practice for pharmacy
Role of pharmacists in supporting children and young people who self-harm
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: diagnosis and management
Supported content
Test yourself: the 2024 CPD and learning quiz
Prescribing
Prescribing dilemma: high-cost biologics in moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis
Structured medication reviews in frailty
Polypharmacy and deprescribing in older people
Test your knowledge of gastrointestinal conditions
Prescribing dilemma: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors for heart failure in an older patient
How to conduct a health assessment for pharmacists
Prescribing dilemma: balancing risk and benefits of off-label migraine treatment in a child
Professional judgement and decision making
Prescribing dilemma: balancing risk and benefit when prescribing anticoagulation in an older patient with falls risk
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: diagnosis and management
Supported content
Understanding scope of practice and accountability when prescribing
How to use clinical reasoning in pharmacy
Test yourself: the 2024 CPD and learning quiz
Prescribing dilemma: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors for heart failure in an older patient
Prescribing dilemma: clozapine prescribing in prison
Research skills and experience
‘From the bench to the patient’: the relaunch of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology
Top ten articles of 2024 from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s research journals
Working across boundaries to enable research in pharmacy
Nominate an outstanding early-career pharmacy researcher for OPERA 2025
From paper to practice: a pharmacy professional’s guide to critical appraisal tools
Why are some research papers cited more than others?
Is research really an exclusive activity or one we can all embrace?
Service innovations and improvement
High-risk medications: a guide for pharmacy professionals
Applications of AI in pharmacy practice
How to implement an electronic prescribing and medicines administration system in a paediatric setting
Designing an electronic prescribing and medicines administration system in a paediatric setting
Principles of sustainable healthcare in pharmacy practice
How to incorporate strategic priorities into clinical pharmacy practice
Replacing automated medication dispensing machines: how to plan and implement change when equipment reaches end of life
Supervision, education and mentoring
Creating effective assessment activities for foundation trainees
Selecting an appropriate model of supervision for foundation trainees
How to optimise the 90 hours of dedicated prescribing practice during the foundation training year
How to be an effective designated prescribing practitioner
How to be an effective mentor
Entrustable professional activities: a new approach to supervising trainee pharmacists on clinical placements
