Making a reflective account – an example

You could use your conversations with people who have urinary incontinence as part of a reflective account for your revalidation submission. Here is an illustration of what an example taken from your practice might look like to show how you have met the selected standards: 

“During the Covid-19 pandemic I have found that more people are coming to the pharmacy rather than seeing their GP. In recent years I have also noticed that we are selling more pads and pants for urine leakage and incontinence.

Pharmacy Magazine had a CPD module about incontinence this year. It’s a topic that I was not fully familiar with and the module helped me to strengthen my knowledge in a few areas including the precipitating factors and the self-care actions that people can try.  

The lifestyle and behavioural measures fit well with our Healthy Living Pharmacy work. As a result:

• First of all I thought about who could be involved in leading this in my pharmacy. My staff member who leads on HLP was an obvious person. I also have a pre-reg and thought it would be a good way for them to develop their inter-professional skills. I asked them both to read the module and then we discussed what changes we might try to make to our way of working that would be realistic within the time constraints we work under. They had plenty of ideas and we agreed one initial action for each of them
• My pre-reg contacted our two nearest surgeries and found out that both had a nurse with expertise in assessing and managing incontinence. The nurses were pleased to be asked about who they wanted to be referred to the surgery and their thoughts on what could be done by pharmacy teams
• My HLP lead agreed to chat to our team members about how they currently deal with requests to buy incontinence pads and pants, and to get their ideas about how lifestyle and behavioural advice could be incorporated. Each was asked to read the concise version of the CPD module in Training Matters
• Members of the team suggested having a shelf sign among the incontinence products saying that advice is available in a private area of the pharmacy and to just ask a member of staff. They felt this was more practical and acceptable to customers than trying to intervene in all sales of incontinence products
• One team member offered to find out what apps are recommended by the NHS and this information was shared with colleagues
• Together with my pre-reg I put together a simple list of questions to ask people who requested advice about incontinence and a set of bullet points about who needed to be referred to the surgery. This has since been improved based on our experience.

In terms of this year’s required GPhC standards for revalidation, I have demonstrated good communication skills (3) with my staff and in my approach to handling sensitive and potentially embarrassing subjects with patients and customers. My professionalism (6) and that of my team has been furthered through improving the way we liaise with our patients and local surgeries. 

I have demonstrated leadership (9) by building on existing pharmacy staff leadership in HLP and by being a role model for my pre-reg on how to go about introducing change, and the benefits of engaging with staff and incorporating their ideas.”