What is the summative assessment process, and who assesses my portfolio?
Advanced Pharmacist Competency Committees (APCCs) are based on the concept of clinical competency committees, which are recognised in the literature as an effective approach to reaching final decisions on individuals’ progression through a programmatic approach to learning and assessment.
APCC assessors will independently undertake a holistic review of the individual’s portfolio content including, but not limited to, supervised learning event feedback, patient surveys, multi-source feedback, other evidence formats, action plans and reflective accounts. The APCC will then have a group meeting. They will be looking for evidence of output, reflection and corroboration against the curriculum outcomes discussion to agree if the curriculum outcomes under assessment have been met. This may be both the core and specialist outcomes in a single assessment, or the separate assessment of the specialist outcomes.
The evidence will be assessed directly against the curriculum outcomes, using the descriptors to guide the assessment only. There will be no additional marking scheme or framework. The number of outcomes assessed will depend on whether the candidate is submitting for core and specialist credentialing simultaneously or separately.
For pharmacists who are submitting the two mental health domains in addition to the five core advanced domains, the APCC will consist of at least three panel members fulfilling the following roles:
- Two advanced pharmacists in mental health
- A pharmacist with appropriate research expertise
- A pharmacist with appropriate educational expertise
Each assessor will review the portfolio and make a judgement as to whether the candidate has met the standard for each of the two mental health domains and the five core advanced domains.
For a pharmacist who has already credentialed as ‘Core Advanced’ and is submitting the two mental health domains alone, the assessment will be undertaken by an APCC, which will consist of at least two panel members fulfilling the following roles:
- Two advanced pharmacists in mental health
Each assessor will review the portfolio and make a judgement as to whether the candidate has met the standard for each of the two mental health domains. If the two assessors reach a different decision, a review meeting will be held. If a consensus is not reached from the review meeting, then the portfolio will be reviewed by a third assessor.
APCCs will be chaired by a trained chair, who will likely be one of the assessors above. If not, it will be a trained independent chair.