Prison pharmacy

Prison pharmacy teams have to cater for patients who require both community and secondary care services.

In 2005 we started to promote our learning programmes and services to prison pharmacists and registered pharmacy technicians. At CPPE we want to reinforce the key messages about CPD and incorporate the learning needs of prison pharmacy staff within the design and development of future programmes.

Embracing the prison pharmacy workforce

During 2003, the government introduced changes to the prison health service and the management of prison pharmacy teams moved to the Department of Health (DH) Offender Health* team.

Committed to learning support and professional development, the DH Offender Health team was keen to promote CPD to the prison pharmacy workforce and from 2005 commissioned CPPE to integrate this workforce into their learning environment.

*in 2003 this department was the DH Prison Health team.

Using CPPE for your CPD

To use CPPE register onto our website and when you are logged in you can find all your CPPE learning activities within My CPPE. You can also check and update your contact details, enable CPPE viewer for programmes and e-assessments you have completed and check orders and bookings.

When you complete a learning programme we will ask for feedback. Using your feedback to our questions, we will then send you an email containing all the information you need to transfer your learning to a CPD entry – we think of this as our CPD present to you!

Networking with the prison pharmacy workforce

We have close contact with the Prison Pharmacy Forum network. If you want to be part of that network or want to find out more about national and local prison pharmacy links please send an email to the Prison Pharmacy Forum.

Getting involved

We are keen to have pharmacy professionals from a wide range of practice to help develop, and pilot new programmes. To read about how you can get involved and sign up to the pilot register go to Getting involved with CPPE pages.

What learning opportunities are available to me?

Our whole learning portfolio is available to prison pharmacy teams.

A good place to start would be to set up a learning community for your team and accessing our focal point and learning@lunch programmes. This way you can choose community based topics (focal point) or hospital based subjects (learning@lunch) and learn together as a team.

Alternatively browse through our learning portfolio by theme and have a look at what we can offer you. Some of our themes include Minor ailments, Mental health, Substance use and misuse. You can:

order an open learning programme, why not download and view before you place an order.

try out our e-learning programmes. Keep up to date with changes in the BNF by using our BNF e-updates programmes every six months.

have a go at our e-assessments – Stop smoking and Substance use and misuse assessments have particular relevance in your sector of the profession.

go along to a tutor led local event such as focal point or a Route to revalidation workshop. You will have an opportunity to to network with other pharmacy colleagues and learn more about advances in clinical practice and service delivery in other areas of pharmacy and to think about how you might apply these in prison pharmacy. You can find an event/workshop near where you live or work.

For more information about CPPE programmes, categories and themes go to features of cppe programmes.

Signposting other learning

We are aware that we cannot always provide the learning that you may be looking for and have a signposting section on our website. We provide details of courses that may be of interest to the pharmacy workforce, offered by other providers. Signposting portfolio