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Pharmacy Act, 1974 (Act No. 53 of 1974)

Board Notice

2018 Competency Standards for Pharmacists in South Africa

7. Structure of the Competency Standards and Domains

 

In 2012, FIP published a global competency framework suitable to use as a mapping tool for the creation of country-specific competency standards. The FIP framework was developed following a comparative study conducted to identify common behaviours within the frameworks used in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA and Zambia.

 

FIP consolidated the information derived from the comparative study into four domains:

(a) pharmaceutical public health (population focus);
(b) pharmaceutical care (patient focus);
(c) organisation and management (system focus); and
(d) professional/personal (practice focus).

 

A competency framework consisting of six domains and a number of competencies suitable for the South African context, was developed. A domain represents an organised cluster of competencies within a framework and the domains, with associated competencies, are summarised in Table 2. The behavioural statements indicating how individuals working within a competency should behave in practice have also been drafted.

 

It is expected that a pharmacist at a higher level of practice, in addition to the behaviours associated with that level, must also exhibit the behaviours from the lower level(s) of practice.

 

Table 2: Summary of domains and competencies

Domains

Competencies
1. Public health
1.1 Promotion of health and wellness
1.2 Medicines information
1.3 Professional and health advocacy
1.4 Health economics
1.5 Epidemic and disaster management
1.6 Primary healthcare
2. Safe and rational use of medicines and medical devices
2.1 Patient consultation
2.2 Patient counselling
2.3 Patient medicine review and management
2.4 Medicines and medical devices safety
2.5 Therapeutic outcome monitoring
2.6 Pharmacist initiated therapy
2.7 Pharmacovigilance
2.8 Clinical trials
3. Supply of medicines and medical devices
3.1 Medicine production according to GxP
3.2 Supply chain management
3.3 Formulary development
3.4 Medicine dispensing
3.5 Medicine compounding
3.6 Medicine disposal/destruction
4. Organisation and management skills
4.1 Human resources management
4.2 Financial management
4.3 Pharmaceutical infrastructure management
4.4 Quality assurance
4.5 Change management
4.6 Policy development
5. Professional and personal practice
5.1 Patient-centred care
5.2 Professional practice
5.3 Ethical and legal practice
5.4 Continuing professional development
5.5 Leadership
5.6 Decision-making
5.7 Collaborative practice
5.8 Self-management
5.9 Communication
6. Education, critical analysis and research
6.1 Education and training policy
6.2 Provision of education and training
6.3 Practice embedded education or workplace education
6.4 Gap analysis
6.5 Critical analysis
6.6 Research
6.7 Supervision of other researchers
6.8 Collaborative research