The Pharmacy Council requires you to complete your MyRecert continuing professional development (CPD) portfolio every year you hold a current Annual Practising Certificate.

MyRecert is a high trust system, meaning that Council does not dictate what you must learn, how you learn it, or how long you take to learn it. Instead, we recognise that you are the best judge of what CPD is relevant to your own ongoing development in your pharmacist role.

Below is a series of informative emails that we sent out in 2024 to help you with each aspect of completing your CPD, and you can read an interview with an experienced pharmacist to find out his tips in our June 2025 newsletter. You can also find more information on our Recertification page.

Email 1: July 2024

About Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

By now you should be planning how you will meet your CPD requirements for the current recertification year, which ends on 31 March 2025.

Most of you are familiar with the requirements, but some of you are newly registered and new to MyRecert. Either way it is timely to remind everyone of the key principles that underpin the current recertification framework i.e. “why do I have to do CPD?”

• Providing evidence of your active engagement in CPD is one mechanism available to Council, as a Responsible Authority (regulator), to be assured that pharmacists are competent to practise safely.  It is how we meet our legal obligation to protect public safety, as required under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003.
• We recognise that pharmacists do a lot of learning over a year.  You are not required to upload all your CPD to MyRecert, only evidence of the six activities we have set.  These are:
  • TWO learning goals
  • ONE critical reflection
  • ONE action towards cultural safety
  • TWO peer group meetings
  • At least ONE “keeping up to date” activity
  • TWO meetings with your pharmacist verifier and final “sign off” (verification) that you have met all the requirements for the year.
• MyRecert is a high trust system which means Council does not dictate what you must learn, how you learn it, or how long you take to learn it.
• We trust that YOU are the best judge of what CPD is relevant to your own learning and development.
• We have provided guidance and templates which you can choose to use but are not obliged to use. Feel free to document your learning in a way that works for you, if you provide sufficient evidence that you have met the requirements for that activity.
• We want to encourage and support meaningful CPD activities, rather than box ticking.  Learning is a lifelong journey – the more relevant it is, the more value it will have for your development.

Getting onto it earlier rather than later will avoid a last-minute scramble.

Where should you be by now? 

By now you should have developed your learning plan for the year. This should identify your TWO learning goals and include a plan on how you will achieve these goals (ideally) by the end of 2024. Don’t go too wide – the goals should be SMART (see guidance material) and most importantly be relevant to you and your area of practice.  Remember to update this document regularly as your learning progresses.  Most importantly, once you have completed your learning goal you should REFLECT on the benefit of the learning you have undertaken by asking yourself these questions, and include this reflection at the end of your learning goal document.

•   Did you learn what you intended to learn?
•   If so, how has it impacted on your practice?
•   If not, why?  What might you do differently next time? (For example, you might find that you get more benefit out of group learning, such as a workshop or a seminar, rather than learning alone.)

For now, the key message is – if you haven’t already done so – get going!

Email 2: Sept 2024

Peer groups

This is the second in our series of quick and easy tips to help you with your recertification requirements for the 2024/25 year.

The focus for this one is on peer groups – the benefits of peer group membership, how to get the
most out of being part of a peer group and some simple “dos and don’ts.” We also explain what is (and isn’t) a peer group meeting.

Why does Council ask pharmacists to belong to a peer group? 

We know that working in professional isolation can have a negative impact on a pharmacist’s competence. The value of peer groups as a way of reducing the risk of professional isolation has been well described in the literature. Learning with, and from, your peers is a great way to keep your knowledge and skills current and provides a collegial environment to discuss your practice issues and support each other’s professional development. Peer groups are also a useful way of holding yourself to account and reflecting on your practice.

 Getting started

By now you should have identified the other pharmacists in your peer group and ideally had your first meeting. We hope you found it a fantastic opportunity for group members to discuss both their individual learning goals for the year, as well as any group learning the team might do to meet other MyRecert requirements.

Peer groups – more than just a staff meeting 

Some key things to guide you:

• Peer groups must consist of at least four members (but be a manageable number)
  • Less than four members is too small to meet the definition of a group, and too many members make discussions challenging, as it generally doesn’t allow every member an equal chance to contribute.
• Peer group membership should be consistent
  • i.e. The same core group of pharmacists should meet each time. This gives the group the chance to establish and build rapport.
• Your peer group should consist of your ‘natural peers’
  • i.e. Pharmacists who work in a similar practice area and who you (ideally) regard as peers in terms of your level of experience.
  • This will provide opportunities to share your thoughts and experiences with other pharmacists who may have encountered similar situations and can share their insights and wisdom.
• Two meetings each recertification year (i.e. between 1 April and 31 March) are the minimum – however, consider an extra meeting or two to optimise the benefits:
  • It’s usually a very positive experience to catch up with your colleagues.
  • It won’t necessarily require much more of a time commitment AND
  • It may offer that extra boost to keep you on track to meet your MyRecert requirements for the year.
• Peer group meetings should be timely
  • i.e. Meetings should get underway early in the recertification year and be well spaced out and held, often ideally, throughout the year.
  • ‘Fitting in’ two peer group meetings in Feb – March (as the recertification year comes to an end) doesn’t give you any real opportunity to benefit from belonging to a group.

If you haven’t found your peers yet, now is a great time to make that happen!  If you are having trouble finding peers, your professional association may be able to help.

Our website has more guidance on peer groups.

Email 3: Nov 2024

Critical reflection

In this third instalment in our series of quick tips to help you with your recertification requirements we focus on written reflection or what is commonly described as ‘critical’ reflection.

What makes reflection ‘critical’?  

When preparing to write this article I came across this definition: ‘A Critical Reflection (also called a reflective essay) is a process of identifying, questioning, and assessing our deeply-held assumptions – about our knowledge, the way we perceive events and issues, our beliefs, feelings, and actions.’ (The Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo, Canada).

So, rather than a simple factual narrative detailing an event that occurred in your practice, a true critical reflection should focus on your feelings and emotions about what happened, what you have learnt from the experience, and most importantly, how you might deal with a similar situation differently in future based on what you have learnt through the process of reflection.

To be truly valuable, reflection should be honest, and somewhat uncomfortable. Rather than reflecting on what someone else did wrong or perhaps patting ourselves on the back about what we did right, we can make the greatest gains to improving our practice when we reflect on the times when things didn’t go quite so well and learn from these experiences.

Dispelling the myths about honest critical reflection 

One of the things we have heard is that some pharmacists are ‘too scared’ to use a mistake, such as a dispensing error, or poor communication with a patient, as the subject of their critical reflection.  Their concern is that they might ‘get in trouble’ with Council if the mistake was identified as part of the annual portfolio review process.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  The reality is that, despite our best intentions, mistakes happen.  A pharmacist’s willingness to own a mistake, reflect honestly on it, and learn from it is always going to be seen as a positive.  It’s called insight!

Which reflective model should I use? 

We have included four different reflective models in our guidance. Each model has common components: i.e., a description of an event or situation, reflection on and ‘making sense’ of the situation, including your thoughts and feelings about it, and finally action – the ‘now what?’

Sometimes critical reflection doesn’t mean that there is a need to change your practice. It may simply confirm that your approach to a situation was sound and provide you with the confidence to continue that approach.

Reflecting on one of the Competence Standards

Instead of reflecting on a critical incident, you may prefer to reflect on one of the Competence Standards. However, the same ‘rules’ apply – i.e., it is not sufficient to just describe the Standard and what it requires. This is an opportunity to critically and honestly evaluate where your practice lies in relation to the Standard and identify any changes you could make to improve your knowledge, skills or behaviours to enhance your competence.

How much do I need to write?

Our website has more guidance on reflection if you need it, or you can email us with your queries at [email protected]

Email 4: Jan 2025

Cultural Safety

In this fourth instalment in our series of quick tips to help you with your recertification requirements, we focus on Cultural Safety.

What is Cultural Safety?

Cultural Safety is a new addition under Domain 2 of the Competence Standards: Professionalism in Pharmacy. Although it has been around for some time, we have learnt from the last two MyRecert portfolio reviews that some pharmacists are still confused about what ’cultural safety’ is.

• Cultural safety can be hard to grasp because it starts with ‘ourselves’.
• It requires you to examine yourself and the potential impact of your own identity and culture on your practice.
• It requires you to self-reflect and address your own power, privilege, biases, assumptions, racism, prejudices and characteristics that may affect the quality of care that you provide.
• The patient/consumer defines culturally safe practice.

Cultural Safety benefits everyone, is relevant to all aspects of pharmacy, and recognises and addresses:

• indigenous status
• gender
• sexual orientation
• socio-economic status
• ethnicity
• religious or spiritual belief
• disability

Our website has more guidance on reflection if you need it, or you can email us with your queries at [email protected]

Email 5: Feb 2025

Verification

This is the fifth and final instalment in our series of quick tips to help you with your recertification requirements for 2024/25. This guidance relates to the verification process, and we hope it will help all pharmacists understand the verification process better, whether they are a pharmacist seeking verification or a pharmacist verifier.

Verification 

Every pharmacist must have a verifier who is another registered practising or non-practising pharmacist. So – in simple terms – your verifier must be a pharmacist.  While the policy allows pharmacists on the non-practising register to act as a verifier, you should consider recency of the pharmacist’s practice, so that they are in a position to provide guidance that is grounded in contemporary practice.

You are required to have at least two conversations with your verifier during the year about the portfolio of evidence you are assembling to meet your recertification requirements. So these conversations should happen well before 31 March 2025. Once the verifier has reviewed your final MyRecert portfolio they must make a declaration within your online portfolio to confirm this.

The verifier must confirm:

• They have read your portfolio of recertification evidence.
• They have had at least two conversations with you about the activities or requirements you have recorded.
• To the best of their knowledge, you have taken appropriate action to remain competent for your role and pharmacy practice setting.

The last point is potentially the most important and is the primary purpose of the verifier i.e. to provide Council with assurance that the professional development activities you have undertaken are appropriate for maintaining your competence.  

Therefore, it is important that your verifier is someone familiar with your area of professional practice and has a good understanding of the sorts of professional development activities that would support your competence in this practice area.

Although you have at least two conversations with your verifier, the conversations do not need to be recorded. However, if you wish to document the conversations we have provided a template you can use.

Our website has more guidance on verification if you need it, or you can email us with your queries at [email protected]

Reviewing MyRecert portfolios

Every year we review a sample of randomly chosen MyRecert portfolios from the previous recertification year.

This annual review is an important way for us as a regulator to have assurance that pharmacists are meeting their recertification requirements. The review is not a test or assessment, and the randomly selected pharmacists have been given feedback on their portfolios that can be used to reflect and improve.

The results generally show that most pharmacists use effective professional development to maintain their competence and are meeting the recertification requirements. Click here to see an example of the 2023/2024 results.