RPS Faculty - Reflections on my Journey
Valuable experience or waste of time and money?
Introduction
The Faculty of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) was launched in 2013 as a means of credentialing pharmacists at different levels of advanced practice. At the time, there was a strong sense that this was a step towards a Royal College model for the profession. The recent reports in pharmacy journals and discussions on Twitter about the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s decision not to pursue a Royal College status has prompted me to reflect on (and share) my own journey towards Faculty membership in 2014 (where I achieved Advanced Stage II).
Why did I decide to Submit an Application?
I submitted my application for Faculty membership as part of the 3rd wave in May 2014. The prospect of professional recognition (potentially as part of a step towards Royal College membership) was appealing. I have had a dual role (split between hospital practice and academia) since 2003 and felt that I would be setting a good example to my peers and students if I achieved Faculty membership in its early days. A downside of having a split role / portfolio career is that the separate appraisals from different organisations often failed to provide me with a holsitic overview of my practice (and a unified personal development plan); I saw the Faculty as a way to try to address this.
How did I Approach my Faculty Application?
The main part of the Faculty application involved submission of an up-to-date portfolio, mapped to the Advanced Pharmacy Framework (APF). Since I hadn’t kept an up-to-date portfolio for several years, I started with a blank piece of paper and wrote down a list of my current responsibilities and what I considered to be my most significant achievements since qualifying as a pharmacist, e.g.
Projects I’d collaborated or led, including revalidation of the Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy and implementing recommendations from a National Patient Safety Agency alert at my base Trust
Publications, including those where I had mentored a colleague in co-writing an article for the Pharmaceutical Journal
External appointments, including being an External Examiner for a similar postgraduate programme at another university and an independent member of a job interview panel for a hosptial trust in the region
Audits and service evaluations I’d completed
Policies and procedures that I’d written or updated
The next step was to map the individual entries to relevant competencies from the Advanced Pharmacy Framework (APF). The e-portfolio had a useful function where I could see the number of entries mapped to each level of the competencies, which allowed me to identify gaps so that I could be more strategic in selecting which evidence I would need to use to satisfy the remaining ones. I could also gauge which level of practice I was on track to achieve (subject to review by the Faculty assessors). My final portfolio had 26 individual entries; I didn’t use all the evidence I had initially identified but I ensured that I had at least two pieces of evidence for each competency.
After updating my CV, the final aspect involved identifying individuals to complete the peer review. Receiving positive feedback from peers can be a humbling experience and multisource feedback is something that is probably not used in pharmacy as well as it could be (a topic for a future blog, perhaps?)
What did I gain from Undertaking the Assessment?
Compiling my portfolio allowed me to reflect on my achievements over the years and provided me with some personal satisfaction even before I received the official report from the Faculty Board. The feedback from the assessors provided some examples of how I could progress to the next level for each of the APF clusters. Spider charts showed which level I had achieved for each cluster as a whole and each competency within the clusters.
Most job interviews nowadays include questions where candidates are asked to draw upon examples from their practice. I will revisit my portfolio when preparing for any interview in the future and this is one of the benefits of keeping a portfolio that I promote to my students.
What were the Drawbacks and Failings of the Faculty Model?
The obvious downsides were the time taken to compile my portfolio (I used a few days’ annual leave to complete the bulk of the work) and the cost of both the assessment and, until a few years ago, retaining the post-nominals awarded. An assessment fee is to be expected, but additional annual payments to retain the post-nominals that you had earnt was a harder pill to swallow (excuse the Pharmacy pun there) - especially as those achieving a higher level of practice had to pay more. I am also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, which only required a one-off fee.
The use of “Fellow” as the highest level of achievement could also be questioned since RPS members can be nominated for a Fellowship of the professional body - explaining why someone is a Fellow of the Faculty of the RPS but not the RPS itself (and vice versa) does not (in my opinion) have a logical basis. A quick scan of the list of current Faculty members suggests that the smallest proportion achieved Advanced Stage I - does this suggest that pharmacists wanted to wait until they were going to achieve at least Advanced Stage II before submitting an application? Promoting the value of being credentialed at an earlier level of advanced practice is something to focus on moving forward.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society is now responsible for approving Consultant Pharmacist Posts. Aligned to this is a revised credentialing service for pharmacists wishing to show they are practising at this level, which appears to have replaced the “Fellow” level of the Faculty. This represents a step towards credentialing by a professional body becoming a requirement for career progression, which is something that the original Faculty model failed to achieve - from my own experience I can vouch that achieving Faculty membership has not benefitted me in this way. The lack of requirement for Faculty membership in job descriptions I’ve looked at leads me to question the extent to which employers were consulted when the original model was being developed. In some ways, pharmacy is more complex than the medical and surgical professions as most of the profession are not employed directly by the NHS. However, any credentialing model is destined for failure if employers do not consider it essential.
There was also uncertainty surrounding whether an individual’s level of practice could be moved up or down (akin to restaurants gaining and losing Michelin stars). A report discussing a model for review exists on the RPS website, but a final decision about its implementation does not appear to have been made.
Final Thoughts
So, one lingering question is “if I knew what I know now, would I have still completed the Faculty assessment?” Compiling an up-to-date portfolio was a useful experience from a personal satisfaction perspective. However, I do not consider the cost of the assessment and subsequent years of fees to retain a post-nominal as money well spent (and I’m probably not alone with this view). I would be naive to think that the first iteration of a credentialing model would be faultless but do hope the RPS reaches out to its Faculty members again before any revised model for credentialing of advanced practice is launched.
Rome was not built in a day