Introduction

Quality of pharmaceutical services is dependent on a number of factors including the knowledge and skills of pharmacists. The introduction of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) is a move to maintain, build upon and increase this knowledge and skills. The approach used by RPSGB for CPD depends heavily on the use of reflection by pharmacists to identify personal development needs. Reflection is the complex and deliberate process of thinking about and interpreting an experience in order to learn from it (1). If new pharmacists are to be prepared for participation in CPD, then the development and use of reflective skills must be introduced at the undergraduate stage. In order to initiate this introduction a reflective practice workbook was produced, piloted with pharmacy students and the completed workbooks analysed for reflective comments.

Methods

A reflective practice workbook was developed for use by students in a 4^th year prescribing and dispensing module. The workbook consisted of an introduction explaining the concept of reflection, the benefits and the need to develop reflective skills, and a worksheet for each week of the module. Each worksheet consisted of a record of work attempted with space for reflective comments by the student on their performance. An example of a completed worksheet was included. Completion of the workbook was voluntary. The student comments were extracted from the workbooks and analysed independently by three researchers for themes.

Results

Eighty out of 105 students returned reflective workbooks, with over 60% completing worksheets for over eighty percent of the module. Analysis showed that the student comments were mainly short, straightforward statements, with few, longer, more reflective comments. The short statements were classed as either pertaining to personal development needs or module content/methods of teaching etc. Statements concerning development needs were categorised further into statements of future action eg 'must revise emergency supply', statements of future action with a reason eg 'Controlled Drugs are tricky - must learn law better', confessional statements eg 'I should do more study', and statements on progression eg 'I am getting better at picking up mistakes'. The longer more reflective statements followed the same themes.

Discussion and Conclusion

Although voluntary, the majority of students returned reflective workbooks. The student comments were mainly short statements, although from the contents, it is clear that students were capable of focussing on and willing to express their own development needs. Few longer reflective comments were provided by the students, indicating that additional skills training will be required in this area. These findings suggest that the RPSGB approach to CPD and in particular, needs development identification, will be manageable by these future pharmacists, provided that additional support on reflective practice is available to them. As a result of this study, reflective workbooks are being introduced to all 4 years of the course.

References

1. Boud D et al, Reflection: turning experience into learning, Kogan-Page, 1985