Returning to prescribing practice

• Familiarise yourself with the prescribing competency framework.
• Assess yourself against each of the competencies in the framework and use it to reflect and identify your learning needs/gaps in your knowledge, behaviours and clinical capability.
  • You may recognise that you are competent in some areas but identify learning needs in others
  • Can you demonstrate competency now, and what is the relevance of that competency to your current practice?
• Look through the different sections of the framework and ask yourself if anything you currently do needs to change, or if there are additional points you need to consider.
• Think about how you can develop your competencies and show how you demonstrate them to prescribe safely. Our guidance on keeping a prescribing portfolio of evidence also has some useful learning activities you could log.
• Plan how you are going to achieve your learning needs and how you can evidence each competency.
  • It may be useful to discuss with a colleague, peer, manager, designated prescribing practitioner, or another suitable individual working in a similar area. They can provide ideas about how to achieve your learning needs.
  • From these discussions, you can create a set of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) objectives that will guide your learning.
  • Make a personal development plan to address the gaps, think about strengths, weaknesses, setting SMART objectives, skills, training and support needed.
  • Do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis to help you evaluate your current situation and address gaps when returning to prescribing practice.

Act and record

• Undertake learning activities in the desired areas for further development.
• Everyone learns in different ways, so identify learning activities that both suit your learning style and meet your learning needs.
• It is important to consider carrying out learning in various activities, to ensure competence in your desired prescribing area.
• Keep up to date with current prescribing practice.
  • For information on medicines optimisation, clinical checks, medicines reconciliation and medication review, patient assessment and consultation skills, and clinical resources, see our prescribing resources page.
  • For ethical issues, see our prescribing scenarios page.
  • To feel competent and confident prescribing, read our prescribing safely and confidently page or the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education’s Return to prescribing page.
• Record your learning using the e-Portfolio to track your competencies.
  • Don’t know what to use as evidence? Take a look at our portfolios of evidence guidance.
• Check that your indemnity covers your activities when returning to the workplace (see our Professional Liability Insurance page).
• Arrange shadowing opportunities either by speaking to peers and colleagues or using our mentoring platform.
• Think about creating a personal formulary when prescribing in a new area to help you gain confidence and keep within your scope (see our personal formulary guidance).
• Make sure you’re competent with the relevant clinical assessment skills and evidence your learning in your E-Portfolio; our prescribing resources page provides helpful signposting to refresh your skills. 

Evaluate

Regularly evaluate your learning needs to ensure they have been met. If not, or you have discovered new learning needs, repeat the steps above. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Have your learning needs been met either in part or in full? 
• For any learning needs that haven’t been met or are partially met, do you have a plan in place to meet those?
• Do you have the necessary resources and support to meet your outstanding learning needs? 
• Have you identified new learning needs? Identify ways in which you could achieve these and repeat the CPD cycle.

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