The Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit was the first major initiative of the AACP Transformation Center that was held simultaneously at six campus locations regionally across the U.S on June 2–3, 2022. We engaged six national organizations as planning partners over the last several months, including the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, the American Pharmacists Association, the American Society of Health-systems Pharmacists and the Board of Pharmacy Specialties.
Approximately 300 participants, including pharmacists from academia and other pharmacy sectors, student pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals gathered to implement new ideas and collaborate with AACP to help prepare for transformation in pharmacy education and practice.
Purpose
The purpose of the BPEP Summit was to achieve consensus and provide action-oriented recommendations that addressed two major questions:
- What does pharmacy workforce optimization look like?
- To get to an optimized pharmacy workforce, what is needed, what changes are required in the following areas?
- PharmD education
- Professional identity formation
- Post-graduate education and training
- Continuing professional development (CPD)
Definition of Optimized Pharmacy Workforce: A sufficient supply of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy residents, student pharmacists and other pharmacy support personnel in patient-centered, team-based healthcare settings able to practice at the top of their education, license/registration, and scope of practice to ensure that patients achieve optimal health medication outcomes in an environment that promotes pharmacists' well-being.
Post-Summit Proceedings
Following the summit, several activities have been in action to continue amplifying the outstanding takeaways that came out of the summit.
Keynote and Panel Discussion Recordings
Participants engaged in strategic analysis and planning around the following four topics: (1) Competency-based Pharmacy Education, (2) Professional Identity Formation, (3) Optimizing the Continuum of Learning: PharmD through Post-graduate Education, and (4) Pharmacists’ Continuing Professional Development and Life-long Learning.
Each topic had a keynote presentation and a reactor panel, followed by breakout sessions. The summit agenda shows the keynote and reactor panel speaker information. The keynote presentation and panel discussion recordings can be viewed below.
Competency-based Pharmacy Education
Professional Identity Formation
Optimizing the Continuum of Learning: PharmD through Post-graduate Education
Pharmacists’ Continuing Professional Development and Life-long Learning
AJPE Commentary
A week following the BPEP Summit, a commentary "The Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit: A Unique Convening with Purpose" was published in AJPE. This commentary provides a brief overview of this extraordinary summit and the events that led up to it. It is not often that a group of health executives, educators, and professionals gather with the goal of identifying a preferred future for their profession and the patients they serve. It is even more rare when such an assembly results in a clear and actionable plan to follow to achieve that desired future. Nevertheless, the BPEP Summit, an unprecedented collaborative event in June 2022 that involved six sites across the country and more than 300 participants, was just such a convening.
Visual Map
AACP worked with a graphic recorder, Jo Byrne, to create a visual map of the BPEP Summit, highlighting the purpose and conversations that took place around the four topics as well as the importance of lifelong learning, interprofessional collaboration, adaptability and inclusivity.
Download a large PDF version of the visual map.
Post-Summit Survey Recommendations
The takeaways from the breakout session groups were recast as recommendations and a web-based survey was created. This survey was sent to attendees asking to rank these recommendations based on the most significant impact it would have on enhancing pharmacy’s capacity to improve health outcomes for all people over the next five years. Please visit the post-summit survey recommendations page to view the recommendations that will guide the action-oriented work of the AACP Transformation Center.
Summary of the BPEP Summit
The BPEP Summit summary article "Working Together: Summary and Recommendations of the 2022 Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit" has now been published in AJPE. This article provides description of the keynote presentation and panel discussions on the four content areas, summary of the pre-summit survey and top recommendations that came out of the post-summit survey in each of the four content areas. The article concludes with a brief overview of the next steps for the AACP Transformation Center.
