Professional development programs in RPSA enhance the continuing education and career training for members in order to help them develop new skills, stay up-to-date on current trends, and advance their careers. This is the additional knowledge, skills, and experience provided to pharmacy students in addition to what they learn in their routine class studies as well as helping them develop new skills for the purpose of advancement in the pharmacy field.

In 1997, WHO introduced “the seven-star pharmacist” concept covering the different roles each pharmacist must perform: caregiver, decision-maker, communicator, manager, life-long-learner, teacher, and leader. The pharmacy students start to have hands-on all of these roles while they are still at the school desk.

All of the goals of the professional development program are achieved under four (4) categories of events organized by RPSA:

These events are organized independently or in joint with others where they are commonly organized in joint with the campaigns. For example, the training programs can be organized with patient counseling events, clinical skills events with patient counseling events, and much more.

I will go one-on-one to describe the details about it in order to explore how each contributes to the professional development of our members:

1.       Training programs

From our perspective, this initiative is regarded as an educational tool for developing students' broad knowledge and promoting dialogue about important issues that are often left out of classes’ curriculum, mainly based on personal research and other ideas worth sharing. Under this program, we organize two important training programs: Trainer’s Development Camp (TDC) and Leaders-In-Training (LIT).

a.    Trainers’ Development Camp (TDC)

The TDC aims to develop a quality and sustainable training program for pharmaceutical students and recent graduates in order to give them a background about experience-based learning and equip them with a set of skills needed for conducting training. The trainers are able to deliver training within the Leaders-in-Training program and other educational events (campaigns, educational and research training, symposia and etc….)

After participating in TDC as a trainer you will gain the important techniques to design, prepare, and deliver high-quality training and you can also become part of the IPSF Trainer Family that may aid you in providing the training to your fellows in other countries.

b.    Leaders-In-Training (LIT)

The LIT aims to develop a quality and sustainable leadership program for pharmacy and pharmaceutical students and recent graduates to equip the future workforce with leadership and management skills required to take global roles in health issues, and specifically engage with policy making. Content frameworks include leadership, management, and advocacy components.

From the “seven-star pharmacist”, “Pharmacist is a leader”. This training is done by inviting successful and exemplary leaders so that they can share their experience with the students and help them to know the good qualities of good leaders. This helps the students to grow their leadership skills at a younger age and this help to develop good future pharmacists who are responsible and accountable in their different working environments.

At the end of LIT, participants shall become confident leaders, who will be equipped with the necessary skills to take over a leadership role (local and international).

2.    Clinical Skills Event (CSE)

The Clinical Skills Event (CSE) was a concept developed by the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists (ASHP). It was created to encourage pharmacy students to develop their clinical problem-solving, verbal and written communication skills, and to promote the role of the pharmacist in patient care.

The Clinical Skills Event (CSE) is an interactive, team-based analysis of clinical scenarios for hospital/health-system pharmacists. It provides pharmacy students with the opportunity to enhance their skills. It focuses on helping you to use your clinical knowledge to solve and improve your patient’s drug therapy. 

Our objective in CSE is to hold a workshop and a live clinical skill event, where pharmacy students are trained on different clinical practices like an NCDs screening practice that includes blood pressure (BP) measurements, Body Mass Index (BMI) calculations, obesity screening, Blood glucose level measurements, and much more. This is commonly followed by a patient counselling event, which gives students hands-on practice and uses their knowledge acquired to provide health advice to the community. 

As the world of pharmacy is constantly updating, keeping your clinical skills up-to-date is paramount.  Getting involved in CSE is rewarding in terms of expanding your clinical knowledge, and reviewing clinical guidelines, but also seeing how other countries are doing in terms of updating their clinical skills and practice.

3.    Patient Counselling Event (PCE)

PCE aims to demonstrate the importance of pharmacy counselling skills, increase awareness of pharmacists as public educators, and encourage and promote the development of the pharmacy profession.

The Patient Counselling Event (PCE) is a great way to promote training in communication skills and provide an opportunity for pharmacy students and pharmacists to learn how to effectively interact with patients in a fun and competitive environment. The PCE scenarios involve a pharmacist (played by the competitor/student) and a patient (played by an actor/academic) interacting in a pharmacy where the pharmacist must communicate with the patient to solve a problem and effectively counsel on therapy.

This is usually done joined with one of the above events, where we commonly organize the training or clinical skills event that will be followed by patient counseling events. For example, we organize the NCDs screening training program that will be followed by outreach to practice what students have gained from training as well as providing patient counselling regarding their results. We also organize the AMR workshop during AMR awareness week where students are trained on AMR followed by a patient counselling event in different hospitals to make awareness among patients and health professionals on their contribution to fighting AMR. Patients are counselled on the importance of taking the full dose of antibiotics as prescribed.

IPSF, together with the FIP Information Section published a joint publication, Counselling, Concordance, and Communication: Innovative Education for Pharmacists. This booklet provides information about patient counselling and how to hold the event.

The IPSF-FIP Patient Counselling Booklet here

The patient counseling booklet: Counselling, Concordance, and Communication were produced and published in 2012. It is an educational tool that may be used to enhance patient communication skills. 

4.    Pharmacy Profession Awareness Campaign (PPAC)

Have you ever had one of those meetings with your friends where they ask you what you are studying? Wonder what pharmacy is? What do pharmacists actually do? Or do they assume that all you do is count pills?

This lack of awareness of the pharmacy profession is prevalent throughout society. Although important to patient healthcare, the pharmacy profession has not been able to communicate effectively to the public about the role, scope, and importance of the profession.

Pharmacy students are the pharmacists of tomorrow and key players within the healthcare system. They will be among leading the profession in the near future and can play a major role in not only increasing awareness but also changing attitudes towards the pharmacy profession. Through the Pharmacy Profession Awareness Campaign (PPAC), we aim to make pharmacy a recognizable profession.

For more information on PPAC, visit another program “PPAC: Meet-The-Pharmacist”

To learn more about our Professional Development, visit the RPSABLOG section to know what we do.