From our Executive Director Professional Services

However, the pandemic truly accelerated our plans to improve many aspects of our business functions. I am so proud of the team for taking on these challenges with aplomb. They have not only adapted processes that suit the current needs of our stakeholders, but they’ve implemented revolutionary and leading services fit for the future of pharmacy education.

I am grateful to work alongside such a dedicated and innovative team. I look forward to another year of enhancements, challenges and achievements.

Accreditation

With 12 pharmacy programs undergoing re-accreditation this year, our Accreditation Team had a colossal schedule ahead of them.

Accreditation Committee

We were delighted to reappoint Professor Rhonda Clifford as Deputy Chair and Fiona Tito-Wheatland as our consumer representative to the Accreditation Committee. We appreciate their commitment and informed contribution to the work of the committee.

Jayne Lehmann also joined the committee given her expertise in diabetes management and education. Jayne works very closely with a pharmacist colleague in Adelaide and with clients of the NDIS. We look forward to her contribution to upholding the educational standards for pharmacy.

Education Providers

The impact of COVID-19 on education providers was sudden and fairly dramatic as providers had to pivot quickly to online delivery whilst in the midst of organisational upheaval at many universities. We kept in touch with our providers and were very relieved that all pharmacy programs were able to continue through the turbulent and challenging times. Pharmacy students were able to graduate as usual and commence their internship.

Examinations and skills assessments

We pride ourselves our robust exam development and delivery methods, and our supportive eligibility assessment processes. We redesigned many services and processes this year to ensure they remain valid and fit for contemporary pharmacy practice.

Adapting our exams

Due to restrictions and lock-downs we couldn’t be confident that interns would be able to sit their exam in test-centres as usual. We were quick to solve this issue by re-engineering the exam and the delivery method so that interns could sit the exam remotely. We modernised this exam whilst maintaining public safety. We are very pleased to report that the feedback from candidates was very positive with their online experience and the pass rate was in line with previous years. Read more about adapting the Intern Written Exam.

Given the success of the intern written examination, we have worked on the delivery of our Competency Assessment of Overseas Pharmacists (CAOP) examination for online delivery, and will have this as a choice for candidates from July 2021.

We completed a review of the Knowledge Assessment of Pharmaceutical Sciences (KAPS) exam. Our exam question writers developed new questions to maintain the integrity of our exams. We adopted the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (referred to as AERA standards) as the benchmark for APC examination development and delivery.

Improving our skills assessment processes

Due to COVID-19 impacts, we worked with the Pharmacy Board of Australia (PharmBA) to extend the skills assessment letter validity period by an additional twelve months. This applied to candidates whose letters were issued between 2017 and 2020, and meant they had more time to prepare for registration or migration-related matters.

We’re investigating how to improve the candidate journey. Upcoming improvements to our eligibility assessment systems will see a quicker and streamlined process for candidates. Candidates will largely benefit from reduced time frames of assessments and smoother overall journey.

Intern-year refinements

Our focus on advancing and assuring quality in pharmacy education has particularly seen improvements being made to the internship year.

Work continued on the refinement and ongoing development of the intern year blueprint. The joint PharmBA and APC Governance group continued to meet to discuss and develop opportunities for intern assessments that are more streamlined and consistent. We do not want interns to be over assessed, so we addressed issues around duplication and improved alignment between the written and oral examination.

Further to this work, we developed a suite of workplace based assessments tools for interns. The intention is to provide intern training providers, preceptors and supervising pharmacists with a ‘tool kit’ of tools to assess the progress of interns developing the skills required for safe pharmacy practice.

A pilot is underway of a set of draft tools that were developed with the support of a technical working group who have generously shared their knowledge and experience in educational and workplace assessments. Hopefully by the end of 2021 we will be able to launch tools to support the assessment of interns in their workplaces.