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
How to design optimal induction pathways for pharmacy professionals
How to support pharmacists during hospital rotations
All hail, the specialist generalist!
How to prepare for the Oriel national foundation trainee pharmacist recruitment scheme
Supporting recently qualified hospital pharmacists: advice for the first few years
Andreea Blaga
Communication and consultation skills
Pharmacy teams identify patients with ‘red-flag’ cancer symptoms in early diagnosis project
How can pharmacists best support patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia?
Supported content
Health psychology and advanced communication skills for prescribers
Best practice principles for inclusive care of transgender and non-binary patients
How to assess mental health when prescribing
Communicating risk: how pharmacists should use data in conversations with patients
Consultation and communication skills for pharmacy OSCEs
Equality, diversity and inclusion
How to make the pharmacy workplace inclusive for neurodivergent team members
Best practice principles for inclusive care of transgender and non-binary patients
How to incorporate strategic priorities into clinical pharmacy practice
Architecture exhibit aims to start a discussion on the use of space in community pharmacies
Addressing microaggressions to deliver cultural competence in pharmacy
How to improve cultural competence in pharmacy practice
‘We are all fighting something’ — shattering the silence on hidden disabilities in pharmacy (audio)
Leadership, management and teamwork
How to incorporate strategic priorities into clinical pharmacy practice
Entrustable professional activities: a new approach to supervising trainee pharmacists on clinical placements
How to design optimal induction pathways for pharmacy professionals
How to work effectively as part of a multidisciplinary team
How to support pharmacists during hospital rotations
Supporting recently qualified hospital pharmacists: advice for the first few years
Educational supervision, assessment and feedback for pharmacists
Practice-based skills
Medication maths: using a resource or artefact when calculating doses and dose regimen
Prescribing dilemma: balancing risk and benefits of off-label migraine treatment in a child
Pharmacy teams identify patients with ‘red-flag’ cancer symptoms in early diagnosis project
Reflective practice for pharmacist prescribers
Communicating risk: how pharmacists should use data in conversations with patients
Preparing for OSCEs in pharmacy training
Optimising the pharmacy team to deliver effective medicines reconciliation during new patient registration
Prescribing
Prescribing dilemma: balancing risk and benefits of off-label migraine treatment in a child
Understanding human factors in patient safety when prescribing
Prescribing dilemma: balancing risk and benefit when treating sertraline sexual dysfunction
Health psychology and advanced communication skills for prescribers
How to assess mental health when prescribing
Managing and reducing polypharmacy when prescribing
Using data to improve prescribing practice
Professional judgement and decision making
Medication maths: using a resource or artefact when calculating doses and dose regimen
Prescribing dilemma: balancing risk and benefits of off-label migraine treatment in a child
Pharmacy teams identify patients with ‘red-flag’ cancer symptoms in early diagnosis project
Reflective practice for pharmacist prescribers
Becoming an advanced clinical practitioner
Preparing for OSCEs in pharmacy training
Optimising the pharmacy team to deliver effective medicines reconciliation during new patient registration
Research skills and experience
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?
Getting into research
Using data to improve prescribing practice
Top ten articles of 2023 from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s research journals
Ethnicity research gap: is pharmacy the key to making trials more representative?
Service innovations and improvement
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
Case-based learning: social prescribing and pharmacy professionals
Adopting a quality improvement approach to patient safety incidents
How to conduct a clinical audit in six steps
Quality improvement in pharmacy practice
