Welcome to the October 2022 PDA Education Update

PDA Education in Autumn 2022

We continued to support trainee pharmacists with our online Assessment Revision Programme. Available at no cost to members, the programme brings together practice assessment questions, revision tips, and mock exams.

Those PDA members taking the exam in November 2022 who want to access the programme can sign up here. We would also encourage all those taking the assessment in November to read the guidance from the GPhC thoroughly by clicking here to watch the recording of a recent webinar that includes examples of questions on the online system used. The webinar can be found here. 

Summer learning

We launched our first summer school with a series of online courses for members including ‘Being a Mentor’, ‘Mental Health Awareness’, ‘Taking the Stress out of Exams’ and a PDA Reps Induction.

The programme combined online learning with live sessions and reached members from all sectors of pharmacy. It saw members come together to talk about some of the issues affecting their working and personal lives.

Education Programme Manager, Emma Tinley said, “we created the summer school to give members the opportunity to do some flexible learning in their own time as much of it was done through our online learning platform. Hundreds of PDA members registered for summer school, which is great for our first one! We hope to do the same again next Summer, with some new courses planned for next year’s programme.”

New programmes for PDA members

We have run a range of new programmes since the last PDA Education update. Including the first ‘Your Rights At Work’ course in July. We know that PDA members experience a range of issues at work, including contractual concerns, not being able to take breaks, payment for training, annual leave arrangements, flexible working, time off for family emergencies, and much more.

This course was an introduction for members to help them to begin to understand their rights at work which is particularly important when employers fail to give their employees what they are entitled to, or if things go wrong. Members from the programme returned to work with a better understanding of their rights in the workplace.

Other new programmes have been developed as a response to the Member Learning Needs Survey sent to all members earlier this year. We have held a new negotiating skills course for PDA Reps, ‘The science behind wellbeing’ webinar with Pharmacist Support and a brand new online workshop on tackling bullying in the workplace.

PDA Reps training

In September 2022 we ran our second face-to-face course. The course was a great opportunity for PDA Reps to meet to learn more about their role. PDA Rep, Michal Lamparski attended the training and said, “for someone who had no previous experience in advising members and working as a union rep this was an amazing introduction that gave me more confidence to start working more actively for the union interests.”

In October 2022 we ran a Negotiating Skills Training Course for reps. This one-day course was a chance for reps to come together to further develop their negotiating skills.

One of the reps attending the course was Daniela Rusalim, PDA Boots Rep for the Eastern Region and Vice President of the PDA NAWP Network Committee. Daniela said, “I enjoyed participating in the negotiation course and I learned a lot from it. The content was high quality, well organised, and very informative. The highlight of the course was taking part in a case scenario, where we all had to use our newly acquired knowledge and skills. The case was challenging and took us out of our comfort zone but it provided us with good learning opportunities. Encouragement for critical reflection was provided throughout the course, which helped consolidate the learning.”

In case you missed it

• Revision Programme for the November 2022 assessment until 3 November
• Taking the Stress out of Exams for student members
• PDA Student Reps training. 

If you would like to attend any of these programmes you can sign up here.

Get involved

If you are interested in becoming a PDA Rep or how to get more involved in the work of the PDA, you can find out how here.