The practice assessment aims to understand how you make decisions to support the delivery of safe, quality care. We are assessing your practice, using the Pharmacy Technician Assessment Criteria, under four domains:
- Patient care support activities
- Collaboration and decision making
- Documentation
- Communication
For each area, specific performance indicators — which describe the minimum practice requirement for all pharmacy technicians regardless of practice site — 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 drug distribution activities, compounding practices, best possible medication histories and patient education activities.
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.
Preparation
Key resources to support preparation for the practice assessment include:
- Pharmacy Technician Assessment Criteria
- Pharmacy technician practice topic
- Decision making practice topic
- Documentation practice topic
- Communication and education practice topic
Document Submission Prior to the Assessment
Registrants are expected to submit the required documentation at least two weeks ahead of the scheduled practice assessment date.
Hospital Pharmacy Required Documentation Examples
Please submit the following list of recent examples.
- Documentation of communication with the pharmacist, physician and/or nurse (for example, consulting pharmacist for decision-making, collaboration, narcotic audits/inventory, end of shift communication) – 1 example
- Medication safety suggestions brought forward to team/supervisor/manager – 1 example
- Documentation of a good catch/near miss or medication incident reported (try to send a copy of your electronic submission or write out the example) – 1 example
For the role that you are trained/certified to perform and have done recently (the last shifts worked) prior to submission due date, submit 8 total examples from the following:Product preparation/transactions you have performed (for example: a BPMH with all source information gathered (including the final paper and electronic documentation); sterile or non-sterile compounding records (recipe/formula, electronic/paper records, label – this may be a batch and a patient specific example); repackaging (including perpetual inventory if applicable), fill list, order entry, narcotic returns or discrepancies, narcotic tracers/audits performed, ADC restocking, interim doses). NOTE: At least 1 example must include documentation of calculations performed.
Community Pharmacy Required Documentation Examples
Please submit the following list of recent (i.e., within the last three months) examples.
- New prescriptions processed, filled or checked – 2 examples (1 regular prescription and 1 opioid prescription)*
- Refill prescriptions processed, filled or checked – 2 examples (1 regular prescription and 1 opioid prescription)*
- Compliance packs filled or checked – 2 examples (include examples of in house prepared compliance packs and central fill compliance packs if applicable)
- Sterile or non-sterile compounded prescriptions completed or checked – 2 examples (ensure the complete compounding record is included in the documentation)
- Prescription clarifications made for patient – 2 examples, if possible
- Verbal prescriptions received for a patient – 2 examples, if possible (not a reauthorization from prescriber)
- Administration of an injection – 1 example, if applicable (example should be within the past year)
- Training patient on a device – 1 example, if possible (including examples of references used, process for training and any documentation)
- Documentation of a good catch/incident reported – 1 example
- Automation in pharmacy – 1 example of transactions for either restocking of canisters or verifying accuracy of dispensing (may include process to scan bar codes)
*Ideally, select opioid examples used for pain management. An opioid is not a controlled drug, benzodiazepine or other targeted substance.
Documentation for each example should include:
- Prescription
- Hardcopy (paper or electronic)
- Complete prescription record (from start to finish including the completed hardcopy/report that contains all steps taken by pharmacy technician and pharmacist for the prescription, e.g., technical check, therapeutic check/clinical verification)
- Patient profile
- Any documentation made at the time (e.g., notes on the pharmacy software system/patient profile, communication with prescriber, what information was gathered, where information was documented in the pharmacy computer, communications with pharmacy team).
Documentation should be submitted exactly as it looked when you completed it. The practice assessment is meant to be a review of your day-to-day practice and your examples submitted should reflect this. A separate summary explaining each patient care case should not be submitted. Extra details added to each patient care cases should not be done for the purpose of the practice assessment.
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 1 or BPMH 1 or COMPOUNDING 2.
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.