A lot of registrants have their GPhC renewal and revalidation date fall somewhere in October, so if yours is coming up and you haven’t submitted your records yet, now’s a sensible time to get it sorted. Every registrant renewing needs four CPD entries, with at least two of them planned rather than unplanned, one peer discussion, and one reflective account linked to a real example from your practice over the past year. Previously I wrote about the change that lets you base your reflective account on any of the nine standards for pharmacy professionals rather than the three the GPhC used to pick each year, and that flexibility is worth using properly rather than reaching for whichever standard feels easiest to write about.
The part people tend to get wrong usually comes down to specificity, where a reflective account that says you improved your understanding of record keeping tells a reviewer almost nothing, and one that names what actually happened, what you changed, and how a patient or colleague was better off because of it does the job the GPhC designed the exercise to do. I saw the same pattern as a pharmacy inspector in an old life, where a pharmacy’s SOPs looked fine on paper until someone had to explain, in specific terms, how they actually worked in practice on an ordinary Tuesday.
If you’re short on material for your CPD entries, or want a structured way to work through a standard before you write your account, that’s what my Risk Management and Assessment course is built for, walking you through identifying, assessing, and managing risk across your services in a way that generates genuine evidence rather than box ticking, and the Introduction into Pharmacy Premises Standards course does the same for premises-specific requirements if that’s the area you’d rather build your reflective account around.
Gaps in your record shouldn’t run past twelve months, and if you genuinely can’t submit on time because of something like sick leave, maternity leave, or a career break, the GPhC does allow an extension if you contact them before your renewal date rather than after it’s passed. Worth doing sooner rather than later if that applies to you.
More Information:
Revalidation resources for pharmacy professionals — GPhC’s hub page, covers the four CPD entries, the reflective-account change, and peer discussion.
Revalidation: FAQs — more detail on each element, plus renewal timing and the extension process for leave or illness.
My Pharmacy Standards courses — the Risk Management and Assessment and Introduction into Pharmacy Premises Standards courses mentioned in the post.
