The PDA welcomes the pausing of the proposal and a commitment to improve engagement and communication with those organisations that represent the profession. However, we are very mindful that “pausing” does not mean that this second attempt to create a pharmacist apprenticeship has been abandoned, as happened with the first proposal earlier this year.
The PDA will continue to represent the interests and opinions of pharmacists in this matter. The official statement communicated by Skills for Health says:
At their December meeting, the pharmacist apprenticeship development group decided that development on the proposal and standard should be paused whilst further engagement is undertaken with the sector to help address some of the misconceptions about degree apprenticeships and their relationship to regulated occupations. A quote from the Chairs is below:
“Having discussed with the development group, we feel that the group’s focus should be on awareness raising with the pharmacy sector in order to dispel further misconceptions about degree apprenticeships. We will be contacting those professional bodies that have taken an avid interest to invite them to further engage with us. We will also undertake some further work around communications.”
The PDA and Guild of Healthcare pharmacists joint statement and letter of 25 November 2019 can be downloaded here.
Related links
- New proposals on pharmacist apprenticeship
- The questions answered about apprenticeships have raised even more serious concerns
- Apprenticeship proposal fails first test
- Responses from the Apprenticeship meeting
- Outcome of Pharmacist Apprenticeship Meeting
- Update on Pharmacist Apprenticeship Proposal
- PDA to convene meeting on apprenticeship proposal
- PDA facilitated large-scale response to unexpected pharmacist apprenticeship proposal, now we need to have questions answered
- PDA asks pharmacists to reject surprise pharmacist apprenticeship proposals