The 2017-18 continuing education (CE) cycle for pharmacy technicians is quickly approaching the final deadline of November 30, 2018. Registered technicians must complete a minimum of 15 continuing education credits (CEUs) and record their learning in one or more learning records. At least one CEU of learning must be implemented into your practice and documented via an implementation record. In addition, technicians must complete the prescribed learning activity assigned by the competence committee, which this year involves 20 multiple choice questions on the NAPRA Model Standards for Pharmacy Compounding of Non-Hazardous Sterile Preparations.
The 2016-17 CE cycle audit process concluded in April, with peer assessors auditing 181 portfolios. Of those, 88 per cent met or exceeded established requirements, seven per cent did not meet the established requirements due to minor deficiencies, and five per cent had significant gaps, errors, or omissions and were referred to the competence committee.
Overall, the peer assessors had positive feedback about the portfolios assessed. When asked to reflect on their assessment experience and provide feedback to technicians, they suggested that you
- provide more explanation or description of
- the steps you took to achieve your implementation objective, focusing on how you achieved your objective; and
- what the outcome of your implementation objective was;
- take the time to read the questions fully before answering;
- look at examples of implementation and learning records; these can be found in the Resources section of the CCP portal or within the CCP tutorial (found on the ACP website or the CCP portal);
- keep in mind that various documents can be combined into one file, as PDF and Word documents can have many pages (there is no page limit, only a file size limit); and
- remember that the learning record and implementation record are two separate things; a learning record summarizes what you learned during an activity, while the implementation record is a description of how you implemented your learning into practice.
