On April 1, 2019, Bill 21—An Act to Protect Patients—officially took effect in Alberta to protect patients from sexual abuse and sexual misconduct by health professionals.
As part of the legislation, all regulated health professionals in Alberta must successfully complete two training courses on preventing and addressing sexual abuse and sexual misconduct towards patients.
Upon completion of each course, regulated members* are required to print a completion certificate and retain it for a period of two years. The required courses are as follows:
Protecting Patients from Sexual Abuse and Misconduct
This course is offered by the Alberta Federation of Regulated Health Professions (AFRHP) and is available via the ACP website. The purpose of the three-module course is to familiarize you with Bill 21 legislation, including key definitions, mandatory reporting requirements, and consequences of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct. It will also create awareness about how to recognize and prevent sexual abuse and sexual misconduct.
Please note that the AFRHP course does not save your progress, so you must print your certificate upon completion, or you will be asked to start over if you return at a later time. The print dialogue at the end of the course also requires that you allow a pop-up in order to proceed.
Standards of Practice: Sexual abuse and sexual misconduct
The purpose of this course is to familiarize you with ACP’s standards, which focus on key definitions, mitigating risk, relationships between regulated members and patients, and expectations of the college and regulated members.
Both courses must be completed by no later than May 31, 2021.
These two courses are now available via the ACP online learning page of the ACP website. Each course should take approximately one hour to complete and can be claimed as non-accredited learning in a learning record for your competence portfolio.
Participation and completion of these courses will help you understand the current expectations of the health community you practice in and the standards of practice. These courses will also help you further understand the policy environment and ways to hold yourself and others accountable to ensuring the dignity and rights of patients are respected.
*A “regulated member” is any of the following:
- clinical pharmacist,
- provisional pharmacist,
- pharmacist locum,
- pharmacist student,
- pharmacy technician,
- provisional pharmacy technician, or
- pharmacy technician locum.
