Literacy profiles in pharmacy

Workbase Health Literacy Conference

May 2012

DEDICATED TO MEMBER PHARMACIES

• Medicines expert.  • Highly trained health professional.• Essential role in dispensing prescription

medicines.• Professional advice on medicines and health

conditions.• Professional health and lifestyle advice. • Diagnosis and triage service. • Highly accessible throughout New Zealand.

The role of a community pharmacist

• A membership organisation representing community pharmacy owners.

• Over 670 member pharmacies.• Advocacy, benefits and services for members.• Participates in discussions that shape the future of

pharmacy.• Promotes professionalism in community

pharmacy.• Provides tools for members to run a successful

business.

The role of the Pharmacy Guild

• One of 33 ITOs. • Three mandated roles determined by TEC:

1. Managing trainingResponsible for arranging and monitoring training and

assessing trainees.2. Leadership

Provide leadership on skill and training needs, including the development of strategic training plans

to assist industry.3. Standards setting

Responsible for setting the skill standards for the industries for which it has recognised coverage.

Pharmacy Industry Training Organisation

• One of the Tertiary Education Strategies (TES) priorities for ITOs is to increase literacy, language and numeracy skills in the workplace.

• ITOs have been supported through TEC fundingto embed literacy and numeracy into training.

• Now considered part of normal ITO activity.

Why literacy

• Developed a Literacy Skills Strategy.• Partnered with Workbase in 2010 to carry out a

range of activities identified in the strategy.– Developed literacy profiles for pharmacy technicians and

assistants.– Aligned all training and assessment material to reflect

the literacy requirements identified in the profiles.– Created new assessment templates and made other

changes to remove barriers for participation and completion.

PITO – what we did

• Following publication of the PITO profiles, the Pharmacy Guild identified a need for a pharmacist profile to be developed.

• The Guild partnered with Workbase in 2011 to develop the pharmacist profile.

• Identified the value of the profiles as an HR tool for staff.– Role/job descriptions.– Task evaluation.– Role requirements.– Career information and counselling.

Pharmacy Guild actions

• During the development, the Guild realised the potential was far greater.– Literacy analysis across all functions.– Raising awareness of health literacy issues.– Tool to modify approaches to dealing with patients and

customers.– A tool that could be applied in many ways.

• The profiles were developed by Workbase experts. They spent time with each staff member doing their day to day roles.

• Extensive use of conversations, questioning and observation.

• Two different documents were created:1. Literacy on the job. This describes the main literacy

and numeracy tasks in various jobs and the frequency that each task is carried out.

2. Literacy profiles. An in-depth description of the literacy tasks and the literacy skills needed to complete them.

Literacy profiles

• Includes: • reading • writing • speaking and listening • numeracy• critical thinking.

Questions?Thank you

PHARMACY HOUSE 124 Dixon Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011P O Box 27139, Marion Square, Wellington 6141Ph (04) 802 8200 Fax (04) 384 8085 www.pgnz.org.nz