The community pharmacist practice assessment criteria focuses on four key areas:
- patient assessment
- decision making
- documentation
- communication and education
For each area, specific performance indicators — which describe the minimum practice requirement for all community pharmacists — are identified. The guidance section of the criteria illustrates how the performance indicator will apply in practice and provides examples of activities that support each standard.
Through a combination of observation and retrospective review of documentation, practice advisors evaluate the processes in place for each of these areas with respect to new and refill prescriptions, adaptations, pharmacist authorized renewals, pharmacist initiated prescribing and medication review or transition in care.
Specific documentation needs to be submitted at least two weeks ahead of the scheduled practice assessment date. Please see the documentation submission information below on what and how to submit.
Practice Assessment Selection Criteria
As of October 1, 2024, the College has the authority to select Part A registrants to participate in the Quality Assurance Program based on risk rather than random selection. This allows the Quality Assurance Program to focus on risk-based, right-touch selection criteria. Risk factors may include the registrant’s workplace environment, the type of services provided, past conduct, previous Quality Assurance Program outcomes, and the time elapsed since their last Quality Assurance Program activity.
Beginning January 1, 2025, Part A community pharmacists will be selected for a practice assessment if:
- Eight or more years have passed since their last practice assessment, or
- They have never completed a practice assessment
Resources
Key resources to support preparation for the practice assessment include:
- Patient assessment practice topic
- Decision making practice topic
- Documentation practice topic
- Communication and education practice topic
- Transitions of Care articles
Pre-Assessment Module
Complete the Overview of Practice Assessments for Pharmacists module before the practice assessment as part of your preparation. We recognize that every pharmacist or pharmacy technician’s practice is unique, including the role that they play in their organization and the patient population that they serve. Please discuss any concerns you have surrounding the requested patient care examples with your Practice Advisor.
Document Submission Prior to the Assessment
If your assessment is taking place remotely, the deadline to submit your documents is 2 weeks prior to your assessment date. However, you may submit your documents earlier if you choose.
If your practice assessment is in-person at your designated practice assessment site, you do not need to submit your patient care examples ahead of time. You must have the examples gathered and ready for review with your practice advisor during the assessment.
Required Documentation Examples
Please submit the following 8 patient care examples:
- New prescriptions: 2 examples (one opioid for pain management, one regular medication)
- Refill prescriptions: 2 examples (one opioid for chronic pain management, one regular medication)
- Adaptation: 1 example*
- Pharmacist Authorized Renewals: 1 example
- Pharmacist initiated prescribing: 1 example (minor ailment, smoking cessation, Paxlovid® or Tamiflu® prescribing)
- Medication review or transition in care: 1 example
Ensure that your examples include at least 2-3 drug therapy problems (DTPs). See the next section for more information.
*In the absence of an adaptation, please submit an additional drug therapy problem (see question below)
Additional patient care examples may be required during the assessment.
For each example, please provide:
- Prescription
- Hardcopy
- Screenshot of when you have completed a clinical verification/therapeutic check (showing software generated DUR messages, if possible)
- Patient profile (including medications, allergies, medical conditions)
- Any other documentation or notes made at the time (counselling notes, notes on the patient profile, correspondence with the prescriber, DTP notes, assessment notes, follow-up notes, etc.)
Documentation should be submitted exactly as it looked when you completed it – do not send a separate summary.
Key Points:
- Select examples for different patients and different medications.
- Select recent examples (i.e., within six months of your practice assessment).
- Select examples that best demonstrate each of the 4 domains.
- “New” Prescription = A medication that is brand new for the patient.
- Ideally, select opioid examples used for pain management.
- An opioid is NOT a controlled drug, benzodiazepine or other targeted substance.
If you have a specialty role, or you are unable to provide the requested examples, please contact your practice advisor.
Required Drug Therapy Problems (DTP) Examples
A DTP is an event or circumstance involving drug treatment that interferes with the optimization of pharmaceutical care. These are broken down into 7 categories, grouped into four pharmacotherapy needs: Indication, Effectiveness, Safety and Use (or adherence) – IESU/IESA
| DTP | Not a DTP |
|---|---|
| Unnecessary drug therapy Wrong drug Dose too low Dose too high Adverse drug reaction Inappropriate adherence Need additional drug therapy | Prescription clarification Back orders Illegible prescriber handwriting Early releases for controlled substances |
It is important to highlight how you identify and actively manage drug therapy problems (DTPs) to help improve patient outcomes.
At least 2-3 DTPs must be included within your patient examples to demonstrate how you identify and manage DTPs to help improve patient outcomes.
You need to include different types of DTPs across your examples and be able to demonstrate collaboration with the original prescriber.
Considerations for the Selection of Examples
All patient care examples must be examples of YOUR work. You will be expected to answer questions about your process in each of the following areas:
- Clinical check
- Counselling or patient conversation
- DTP identification and management
- Prescriber communication
- Follow up
Documentation Format and Name
For all the requested documentation, you should either:
- scan the documents and save the screenshots as PDFs (strongly preferred), or
- take a picture and save as a JPG.
Please ensure the quality of the picture is of good clarity and reasonable size so the practice advisor can read it easily.
For PDFs, use 1 PDF per example (i.e., include all documents for 1 example in the same PDF). Documents should be well organized, so it is easy to figure out what happened.
Naming
To ensure that the practice advisor knows which documents correspond to which type of patient care activity, we ask that you please NAME the document attachments to indicate this clearly.
- For example: NEW RX opioid 1 or MEDSCHECK 2 or REFILL RX regular 1, etc.
If a drug therapy problem is included in the example, please indicate with “DTP”.
- For example: New Rx 2 with DTP, Refill 1 with DTP
Document Submission via Microsoft SharePoint
Documentation submission is done via Microsoft SharePoint.
You will receive an email from [email protected] containing all of the document submission requirements and where you’ll be asked to submit your documents using the Microsoft SharePoint file request link.
You’ll be asked to upload all of your documents directly from your device. To do so, follow these steps:
- Once you click on the Microsoft SharePoint file request link, a new page will open
- Click “Select Files” and browse the appropriate folder on your device
- Select the first example and click “Open”
- If you need to add additional files, select “Add more files”
- Select the next example and click “Open”
- Repeat this process until all of your files are uploaded.
- Once you verify all of your documents appear, type your name in the text box (if it isn’t already pre-filled in) and click “Upload”
Please note that once your submission is uploaded, you won’t be able to access the documents, so please ensure that you have them available during your assessment.
When completing the submission:
- Send all of your documents in on the same day.
- Include a list of examples you have submitted and the number of pages for each example so your submission can be reconciled.
Once your submission is uploaded, you’ll be notified immediately by an on-screen message that your files are “Finished Uploading”. This means that your files were received successfully. Further communication will ONLY be sent if your submission is incomplete.The submission link will automatically close 90 days after it is sent. This timeline will not affect any documents you have previously submitted for your practice assessment. Your documents will remain on file until your assessment date. If you require an additional submission link to be sent, please email [email protected] to request one.