Development, validation and implementation of continuous professional development programmes for community pharmacists

In India, structured continuous professional development modules are not available to update the knowledge and skills of the practicing community pharmacists. A prospective study was designed to develop, validate and implement continuous professional development modules and to assess the impact of training programme on knowledge and skills of community pharmacists. Modules were developed by referring to standard texts and data bases and were validated for the content. The impact of training programme on pharmacists' knowledge and skills was assessed using suitably designed pre and post training knowledge attitude and practice questionnaires, pre and post training questionnaires for individual continuous professional development training sessions, pre and post training patient counseling skill assessment, blood pressure measurement skill assessment and capillary blood glucose check-up skill assessment check-lists. Data was analyzed by applying suitable statistical methods using InStat version 3.01 statistical software. Fourty eight community pharmacists were enrolled in to the study. A statistically significant (P<0.05) improvement was observed in post training knowledge attitude and practice scores and in post training scores of individual training sessions. A statistically significant (P<0.05) improvement was also observed in post training scores of professional skills such as Patient counseling, capillary blood glucose recording and blood pressure measurement skills. The study findings conclude that continuous training updates the knowledge and skills in practicing the pharmaceutical care in their pharmacies.