A new edition of the International Pharmaceutical Federation’s global framework for quality assurance of pharmacy education was launched at the World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
A new edition of the International Pharmaceutical Federation’s global framework for quality assurance of pharmacy education was launched at the World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The framework, first published in 2008, is intended as a tool that can be adapted to suit national needs in assuring the quality of the educational development of an adequate and appropriately trained health care workforce. “Many countries are introducing, expanding or undertaking major transformation of pharmacy education and they can use the framework as a starting point,” said Mike Rouse, the FIP Education Initiative’s Quality Assurance Domain lead.
New to the second edition of the framework are two additional pillars of quality: context and impact join the original three pillars (structure, process and outcomes). The two new pillars address the concept of social accountability, which is getting greater attention in the education of health professionals, Mr Rouse explained. “By failing to recognise and address context, all other pillars of quality can be compromised, and making an impact is the final proof of quality in pharmacy education,” he said.
For each of the five pillars, the second edition provides quality indicators, which make the framework a more usable tool for external evaluation or self-assessment of the quality of pharmacy education. For example, a quality indicator of context is that the mission, goals and values of the pharmacy school are developed with input from key stakeholders, internal and external.
In addition to the two new pillars, the second edition now incorporates three foundations of educational quality – science, practice and ethics – which ensure the competency base for education.
The second edition of Quality assurance of pharmacy education: the FIP global framework is available at www.fip.org/educationreports.
