GPhC: Students can expect update on pre-reg exam ‘by next week’
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has said it is expecting to be able to provide pre-registered pharmacists with an update on the registration assessment ‘by next week’.
This comes after the presidents of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA) urged the body to clarify when the 2020 registration assessment will take place.
The letter sent to the regulator last week (18 September) said that the ‘delay and the lack of progress updates are causing considerable additional anxiety for those waiting to sit the exam’.
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‘It is vitally important that you communicate regularly with trainees who are feeling increasingly frustrated,’ it added.
A GPhC spokesperson told the Pharmacist yesterday (24 September) that the body was in the ‘very final stages of the procurement exercise’ and that they ‘expect to be able to give a further update to all candidates about the registration assessment by next week’.
Earlier this week (22 September), Nigel Clarke, GPhC chair, wrote a letter in response to RPS and BPS, which said that the regulator ‘could not confirm an exact date until [it] has completed the procurement exercise to identify a supplier to provide the online assessment’.
Mr Clarke also agreed with the bodies that communication with students is important and assured them that regular emails have been sent to candidates ‘whenever there have been updates to share’.
Students and registered pharmacists have taken to social media to express concern about the lack in certainty over the upcoming exam date:
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The fact that @TheGPhC are yet to announce a pre-reg exam date is terrible. Hundreds if not thousands of 2019/2020 pre regs are having to go on universal credit due to no jobs or lack of provisional positions. Itt is absolutely appalling.
— Sadhna⁷🌻💜 (@SadhnaAyesha) September 21, 2020
3 months later, and we’re still unsure when the exam will be. If the exam was going to take this long and be this difficult to rearrange, I can’t understand why @TheGPhC didn’t propose an alternative platform for us to demonstrate our competence as Pharmacists 🤷🏻♀️
— Amina (@aminax97) September 24, 2020
I know that I am not alone in saying that not having a date for the exam is causing a lot of unnecessary stress on top of an already stressful situation. #provreg pharmacists are providing valuable support to their sector and have received little to no recognition from @TheGPhC
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— abby clarke (@abbyclarkeee) September 21, 2020
Absolutely. We need our pro regs to be recognised and prioritised by @GPhC. With a clear plan for final exam. This is taking far too long and is unacceptable. So you can all get on with your lives, careers and continue to support the NHS.
— Susan Roberts (@susmacgroberts) September 25, 2020
Back in March, the GPhC and the Pharmaceutical Society Northern Ireland announced they were both postponing this year’s registration assessments until ‘the end of this year or in early 2021’, following the initial outbreak of Covid-19.
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