From our Deputy CEO

COVID did not stop us and thanks to our Professional Services Pharmacist Dr Josephine Maundu and consultant Dr Hayley Croft we developed and launched new tools for preceptors to support and assess interns during their supervised placements. This supports the development of pharmacist competencies for the protection of the public. We are now developing support materials for preceptors and working with pharmacy chains and intern training providers who are keen to embed these tools in their programs.

As well as new tools and in partnership with the Council of Pharmacy Schools launched LIPPE: Leaders in Indigenous Professional Pharmacy Education. Led by our Board Director Professor Fay McMillan a proud Wiradjuri yinaa (woman) the Indigenous led steering committee is ensuring the project is delivered in a culturally safe manner. Initial action was to launch a series of webinars to support and encourage the teaching of Aboriginal and Torre Strait knowledge in pharmacy education. We were encouraged by the positive reception to the webinars and the feedback has been very motivating for us as we plan the next steps for the evolution of LIPPE.

In addition to the above projects Josephine was able to make a contribution to the review of Professional Practice Standards and the review of quality assurance programs for community pharmacies.

Although COVID prevented us from gathering at conferences we were still able to contribute to the online CLEAR conference about pivoting of our examinations team to develop and deliver online examinations for the intern written exam. A presentation was delivered in conjunction with the Pharmacy Board of Australia as together we worked to increase capacity for pharmacy graduates to join the health workforce and address the escalating health needs of the community.

Accreditation

Thanks to a big effort by our accreditation team, 10 education providers underwent reaccreditation including intern training providers who for the first time were assessed against the 2020 accreditation standards. The reaccreditation assessments involved contribution by 25 SME’s offering their expertise to support us to undertake this accreditation work.

Virtual site visits were challenging as we missed the interaction with our education colleagues however we all adapted quickly and seamlessly to a new way of conducting our work. More challenging was the ‘tooing and froing’ for our accreditation assessment teams and accreditation staff as we all ducked and weaved around COVID.

The Accreditation Committee met five times during the year and again online meetings became vital to continue the review and appraisal of pharmacy education programs.

The transition to outcome focused standards has allowed providers to consider how they are delivering pharmacy education programs and an innovative new program was reviewed and accredited by the Accreditation Committee. For the first time an ‘integrated’ program combining the degree and internship will be offered in 2023.

In addition, we were able to accredit a new provider offering a degree program that intends to focus on interprofessional learning opportunities for their students.

Our internal processes are continuously reviewed and updated to ensure our guidance and responses to education providers remain relevant and timely. It is our intention that we are attentive and not burdensome to providers while balancing the need for the Accreditation Committee to be fully informed about activities and developments within programs.

Examinations

We were thrilled to appoint Beth Kerrison to the position of Director of Examinations although it was as sad to farewell Jennifer Lawrence as she took up a position outside of APC.

Under the guidance of our consultant psychometricians, we embarked on an innovative pilot project to address the bottleneck of introducing new validated and tested questions into our exam papers. The pilot has assured us the methodology is robust and reliable and will introduce a new way of reviewing and validating questions although we have more data to collect and review for certainty.

Our Examination SME’s were again vital to the ongoing development of contemporary examination and we are very grateful for their contribution and willingness to work with us.

Assessments

We continued our work to improve the experience of candidates applying for a skill assessment through continual revision of our technology that support candidates and the Team. The enhanced technology was very timely as the number of applications we received started to increase each month even though our borders were closed for a significant part of this financial year.

Improvements to our communication to candidates commenced with a review or our assessment standards to make very explicit the criteria that is required for a successful skills assessment outcome.