Protected learning time: position statement

The Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee believes that all pharmacy professionals should have protected learning time within working hours. This time should enable pharmacy professionals to undertake educational activities to support professional development and advance their practice, ensuring patients continue to get the best care.

Each pharmacy professional has an obligation to support the development of others, and to keep up to date with advances in medicine and service development to meet the needs of their patients. This should be supported by employers, contractual frameworks and wider professional support to help ensure the wellbeing of the workforce.

Protected learning time will enable pharmacy professionals to engage in professional development aligned to relevant post registration curricula, leading to a pathway for advancement and assurance of post-registration professional capability for patient facing roles.

This position aligns with current strategy for the workforce including those listed below.

Pharmacy delivering a Healthier Wales 2025 goals

Goal 5.4 states:

Ensure flexibility to train and time to train and mentor others are embedded in workplans and are protected activities.

Goal 7.3 states:

Ensuring all pharmacy professionals (employed and self-employed) committed to working in Wales are supported to access education and training and are capable of providing continuity of services for patients in Wales.

Prescribing progress: transforming clinical hospital pharmacy in Wales for enhanced patient care

Recommendation 19 states:

A culture of continual professional development, quality improvement, service evaluation and research must be further embedded within the pharmacy team. Education providers must design flexible training around the workforce needs.

Within this, the report states that:

Pharmacy professionals must have access to protected time for learning, quality improvement and research and development to help facilitate this.

Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) strategic workforce plan 

The plan states:

Uptake of central development funding for pharmacy teams, secured via the HEIW education and training plan, has been suboptimal due to lack of protected development time, or withdrawal of time due to lack of cover.

Personal development has a positive impact on wellbeing.^{[footnote 1]} The 2023 RPS workforce wellbeing survey showed that a large majority of the pharmacy workforce are at a high risk of burnout. A lack of protected learning has been identified as one of the main contributing factors. Organisations with a learning culture also have increased productivity.^{[footnote 2]} Protected learning time is also likely to make the day job of being a pharmacy professional more attractive as a career, helping to attract and retain high quality professionals within the profession.

Unfortunately, the majority of pharmacy professionals do not appear to benefit from protected learning time. The RPS wellbeing survey (2023) showed that:

access to protected learning time varied between pharmacy sectors; 93% of respondents working in community pharmacy are offered insufficient or no protected learning time beyond mandatory organisational training, which is much higher reported rate than those working in hospital pharmacy and general practice (83% and 61%, respectively).

The Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee recognises that time is also needed for developing others within the team and emphasises the responsibility for employers and line managers to ensure the personal development of all staff within the pharmacy team is accommodated.

Most pharmacy professionals are patient facing and for those progressing to an advanced level, should have a job plan consisting of dedicated time for each of the 4 pillars of professional practice in healthcare:

• clinical practice
• research
• leadership and management
• education and training

These are separate entities, and time for research, and to develop others must be accounted for in addition to time for developing self.

The key principles are:

• We encourage employers in Wales to include protected time for personal development, training of others and research activities within job plans.
• Pharmacists working towards RPS credentialing assessments must have time to undertake learning and development that contribute to assurance of their capability across the 4 pillars of practice, or other assessments required for their role. Patient facing pharmacy technicians should also be working across the 4 pillars of practice, within a post registration framework.
• Collaboration is needed to continue to recruit and train more pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, ensuring pharmacy professionals see Wales as the place where they can be supported to excel in their careers for patient benefit.
• Pharmacy professionals must be supported and rewarded for their contributions to teaching, showcasing best practice at conferences and mentoring others.
• Funding and consideration for the protected learning time needs to be built into any contract for services and training, such as through HEIW contracts and the community pharmacy contract.
• General Pharmaceutical Council should make clear their reasonable expectation of employers to support protected learning time, so pharmacists can undertake learning and development activities that supports their advancement against recognised career frameworks.

There has been considerable progress in Wales to date in investing and implementing protected learning time for pharmacy professionals. This includes:

• A HEIW commissioned pilot study into of protected learning time was commenced by CureMed in 2021.^{[footnote 3]} The project evaluated 3 different modes of delivery of protected learning time for community pharmacists. The results showed that when individuals had protected time to expand their ‘scope of practice’ they developed a wider range of services in primary care via community pharmacies.
• A second phase of the pilot was commenced in February 2023 for independent prescribing pharmacists specifically, where 30 delegates had approximately 6 to 9 months to utilise 5 days of protected learning time. The report is due to be published spring 2024.
• The introduction of the HEIW post registration foundation pharmacist training programme, which provides 80 postgraduate credits and an independent prescribing practice certificate from Cardiff University, and dedicated protected time in practice with support from supervisors equivalent to a day per week for fulltime learners, plus 1 day a month funded for the supervisor time.
• The foundation pharmacist training programme in Wales provides additional funding for all designated supervisors to make time for training of others, as well as providing protected learning time for the trainees of approximately half a day a week.

The HEIW pharmacy workforce plan will help increase the number of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to allow an increased capacity to allow more time for education and training across the workforce.

HEIW continues to fund and support pharmacy professionals to access high quality post-registration development opportunities. It is the responsibility of HEIW to ensure that the funded training available locally, regionally, or nationally provides the right level of education and training to enable assessment and successful credentialing against the relevant curricula where appropriate.

[1] 5 steps to mental wellbeing. www.nhs.uk mental health website accessed January 2024.

[2] Ahmetaj, G. and Daly, J. (2018), Driving Performance and Productivity: why learning organisations propel and sustain more impact. Towards Maturity: CIPD in focus report.

[3] Bartlett, S. and Bullock, A. (2022), An Evaluation of Models of Support for Community Pharmacy Registrants’ Development. Final report. Cardiff Unit for Research and Evaluation in Medical and Dental Education.