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How did the process begin?
“The Accreditation Council was asked by many of its stakeholders to investigate whether or not it could develop a pharmacy technician program accreditation process. The CCAPP board approached it from three points of view: first, national standards of competency needed to be developed; second, educational outcomes needed to be developed; and third, there had to be a business case that would permit CCAPP to take this on and actually provide sufficient revenue to cover the cost of doing it without transferring the expenses over to the university side, which could not be expected to be responsible for an accreditation program for the college system. Between 2005 and 2007 these issues were addressed, and CCAPP was able to begin the process.”
What are the goals, and how does the accreditation process work?
“If you look at the work of the recently completed Moving Forward projects, the study of the human resources needs for pharmacy in Canada and the Blueprint for Pharmacy vision, the ultimate goal is to have a scope of practice for pharmacy technicians that allows them to do much of the dispensing that pharmacists are now responsible for. That requires a competent individual who has completed a standardized training program, and credentials that meet national expectations. There will be a national certification examination set by the Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada that will become the entry point for pharmacy technicians to become registered and regulated by each of the provincial pharmacy regulatory authorities. And in order for pharmacy technicians to write the national certification examination they will have to have come out of an accredited pharmacy technician training program. The result will be a consistent stream of people, all trained to the same level, writing a national examination. The whole structure of the process will be very similar to what currently exists for pharmacists.”
Who benefits from the accreditation of pharmacy technicians?
“There are several beneficiaries. Current and future students benefit because they will have a measure of the quality of programs and will be able to use that indicator to decide whether or not they’re going to apply for admission. It also gives them a measure of confidence that the program they’re entering meets a national standard. Government and the private sector benefit as well, in that accreditation provides a level of assessment of the investment of public funds or expenditures by students for tuition. The profession benefits too, because graduates will meet standards that improve the profession. And lastly, the general public benefits because they’ll have confidence that the people moving into the healthcare field are highly trained, accountable, and bound by a code of ethics. The public will now be able to go into a pharmacy and see the pharmacist as part of a clinical drug care team, whose principal responsibility will be to help patients obtain the optimum benefit from drug therapy, with less concern for performing technical dispensing tasks.”
Will high school students now need to meet certain prerequisites to get into college courses?
“Yes. At one time, if you had the tuition and could pass the college interview process, you just signed on the dotted line and moved forward to take the program. Now all accredited programs will have to have a meaningful admissions process. Students must have upper level high school science and math courses, a set standard of English or French language fluency, keyboarding skills, and a criminal record background check. Programs will also have to try to assess whether there’s a good match between the nature of the job role and the aptitude of prospective students to enter this field. Pharmacy technicians work in fast-paced, team-oriented environments, with zero tolerance for errors. We want to make sure the colleges are bringing people into the profession who can function in these settings.”
How will the regulation of pharmacy technicians impact pharmacists in terms of them being able to broaden their scope of practice to include more clinical duties?
“The profession of pharmacy has made some very significant commitments to the Canadian healthcare system in terms of what the role of pharmacists will be in the future. Pharmacists will be doing much more in terms of clinical patient work and drug therapy management. But if the pharmacist is chained to a dispensary counter 8 hours a day there’s no way she or he can review a patient’s therapy or develop a care plan or make recommendations to physicians and other health care professionals. The only way they can do that is by turning dispensing duties over to a well educated pharmacy technician who can add value to the profession of pharmacy, who has an expected level of knowledge and skill, as well as the legal authority to do more than before. In other words, appropriately qualified pharmacy technicians will free up time for pharmacists to pursue more direct patient care services.”