A system for developing pharmacy continuing professional education programs in the Philippines

The current global emphasis on quality, cost-effectiveness and equity in health care probably demands greater competency in practice amongst health professions. The strong endorsement by different sectors, including governments, for continuing professional education (CPE) as a means to achieve quality care by pharmacists, makes it more imperative for CPE providers to develop a systematic and reproducible method of assuring the quality of learning. The present work is a proposal for creating a system which could provide relevant CPE programs for pharmacists in the Philippines. In this work, the synthesis of a CPE system is preceded by an examination of the factors and issues affecting the professionalisation of pharmacy including implications for practice and education in leading Western countries. CPE and related education concepts are also reviewed. Subsequently, a conceptual framework is formulated and this facilitates a comparative analysis of some existing CPE systems and also provides the main structural basis for developing the proposed system. The system developed in this work consists of key elements and a key process. The four key elements which consolidate the learning guidelines in program planning are (i) adherence to relevant concepts of adult education, self-directed learning, lifelong learning and competency-based education; (ii) incorporation of training needs assessment and situational analysis in the formulation of objectives and design of learning; (iii) adoption of a flexible curriculum approach and (iv) inclusion of workplace evaluation. The key process, composed of the basic stages of planning, implementation and evaluation, is designed according to the principle of cybernetics advocating the need for a suitable feedback mechanism to channel evaluation results to future planning. Some details regarding the planning, implementation and maintenance of the proposed system, as applied to the Philippine setting, are included in the present work. A learning strategy model is developed to demonstrate the usefulness of the system. Based on the results of a training needs assessment of Filipino pharmacists conducted in 1992-1993, the strategy is focused on the competency of pharmacists in rational drug use promotion. The Competency Standards for Entry Level Pharmacists in Australia is adopted as the basis for formulating the learning objectives and performance criteria, developing the curricular content and recommending evaluation methods suitable for such a program. Modular learning is chosen as the main mode of learning to satisfy the identified learners' need for time flexibility and availability. To comply with the need for variety, the module is proposed to be a combination of printed study guides and audio-tapes and supplemented by other methods which are feasible at the level of implementation. The adoption and implementation of the proposed CPE system, if to be successful, will require some reforms in the existing pharmacy practice, undergraduate education and CPE provider system in the Philippines.