Interest in professionalism within UK healthcare has increased following reports highlighting poor patient care. This, combined with the development of new patient-facing roles for pharmacists, has led to questions about how pharmacists develop professionalism.
The pre-registration placement is a key component of the education and training of pharmacists. This is when pre-registration trainees spend 52 weeks in an approved training site under the supervision of an experienced tutor.
This study explored how professionalism is understood, developed and assessed during the pre-registration placement from the perspectives of the professional regulator, which is the General Pharmaceutical Council, service users, pre-registration trainees and pre-registration tutors.
An interpretative paradigm was adopted, involving a semi-structured interview, focus groups and qualitative e-questionnaire. An active thematic interpretative analysis was used to identify and evaluate patterns and meaning across all data sets.
Stakeholders understood professionalism in ways that were dynamic and subjective; a shared definition was elusive. Trainees and tutors provided insights into a series of transformative moments which potentiated professionalism development. The first moment being the issuing of the title pre-registration trainee. All groups reported that emotional connections with patients throughout the placement aided professionalism maturation from a self-centred student to becoming an outwardly looking and responsible professional. Tutors indicated the rate of professionalism development may vary across sectors of pharmacy practice, with community pharmacy facilitating faster professionalism maturation due to increased trainee autonomy. Although no tutors reported that patients formally assessed trainees’ professionalism, service users expected to be involved.
This study proposes the existence of transformative moments and maturation periods during in pre-registration training and suggests both are essential to becoming a professional. The study suggests careful planning of training placements to optimise professionalism development across different sectors of practice. Formal and consistent involvement of patients in assessments of trainee’s achievement of professionalism is recommended.
